Spielberg has owned the rights for ages...
It’s been a long old road getting a Tintin movie up and running with Steven Spielberg having spent the best part of thirty years sniffing around the character.
Although not a childhood fan as some have claimed, the great man’s interest was apparently piqued by a comparison made in the wake of Raiders of The Lost Ark .
“In 1981, when Raiders came out, I was reading a review in a magazine,” Spielberg told the Daily Inquirer . “The review compared the story of Raiders to Tintin . I’d never heard of Tintin . I asked my assistant to go find out what this is all about. My assistant came back with five Tintin books and they were all in French. But I didn’t need to read the captions. I could understand the entire story by looking at the pictures. I thought the artwork of Hergé was brilliant.”
Seeing the potential in a character boasting reams of pre-written stories, Spielberg arranged to meet with the Belgian cartoonist to discuss a possible movie adaptation. Sadly for him, Hergé passed away before the head-to-head could take place, but his widow clearly liked the cut of Steve’s jib, and in 1983 a deal was struck allowing Spielberg the rights to the boy journalist and his adventures.
However, the project remained on the shelf for years, with Spielberg reportedly dubious as to how well he could do the project justice with the technology available at the time. Hergé himself was apparently none-too enamoured with either the live-action or animated adaptations of the ‘60s, leaving Spielberg scratching his head as to how he could get the character up on screen without trampling over the old boy’s legacy…
Spielberg has roped in a friend to help out...
Fast-forward a decade or two and technology was gradually catching up with the Spielberg imagination. His original option having lapsed in the late ‘80s, Spielberg threw his hat into the ring once again by re-buying the Tintin rights in 2003, with DreamWorks announcing the project as greenlit later that year.
So how come Steve was ready to get serious all of a sudden? Well, it turned out he had something of a secret weapon up his sleeve in the form of an announcement that Peter Jackson had agreed to produce the film. Suddenly, a project that had always been lacking technological clout now had the backing of the weird and wonderful WETA Digital to bring Hergé’s creations to life.
The new plan was to create a trilogy of Tintin films, with Spielberg behind the camera for the first instalment, and Jackson taking charge of the second. Matters are a little less clear surrounding the third film, but there remains the mouth-watering prospect of both beards teaming up to co-direct the concluding episode!
In any case, the pair’s enthusiasm seemed irresistable, with Spielberg confident that through initial motion-capture experiments, they had cracked a winning formula for how to present the film. “Hergé’s characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul,” he gushed to Variety . “They go far beyond anything we've seen to date with computer animated characters.”
Universal threw a financial spanner in the works...
So with Tintin boasting arguably the two most bankable directors in Hollywood behind the camera, the film will be a dead-cert to clean up at the box office, right? Well apparently the bean-counters at Universal weren’t so sure.
With DreamWorks’ parent company Paramount agreeing to stump up half the cash, plans were in place for Universal to provide the rest. However, when Spielberg met with executives to talk numbers in September 2008, the studio balked at coughing up the $130 million required, particularly when it became clear that Spielberg would be requesting his customary 30% of the movie’s total gross.
With shooting having been set to start in October, Jackson and Spielberg were left looking rather red-faced, with Paramount reluctant to foot the whole bill. The shoot was shelved, causing the pair to lose their original pick for the role of Tintin, Love Actually ’s Thomas Sangster.
Happily, Sony eventually stepped up to the plate, agreeing to co-fund at least the first two films, with a further option on the third. With the money finally in the bag, Steve and Pete at last had the green light to whip up some ground-breaking WETA wizardry…
It will be filmed in 3D, with a little help from WETA...
So, with a hefty budget to draw upon, and no little Kiwi expertise on hand, we can expect this one to look a bit special. However, Spielberg has whipped anticipation up to fever pitch by claiming Tintin ’s motion-captured animation will be unlike anything we’ve seen before.
As he stressed to Variety back in 2007, the plan has always been to be as faithful to Hergé’s original creations as possible. “We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live-action film,” he said, “and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honour the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created.”
Spielberg and Jackson will aim to achieve that effect by harnessing the same groundbreaking 3D technology used by James Cameron on Avatar , with actors kitted out in lycra mo-cap suits, and sporting head-mounted cameras designed to record every facial tic and twitch. Meanwhile, a handy monitor allowed Spielberg to see the actors appear in real-time as their computer-generated alter-egos, a trick that had the director gurgling with excitement.
“It made me more like a painter than ever before,” he told the LA Times . “I got a chance to do so many jobs that I don’t often do as a director. You get to paint with this device that puts you into a virtual world.”
So, fans of the books will be relieved to know that the Tintin up on screen will be the exact image of the character from the books, and yet will also be, according to Spielberg, “Jamie Bell’s complete physical and emotional performance.”
Ah yes, Jamie Bell. We were just coming on to him…
Jamie Bell is Tintin...
As we mentioned before, doe-eyed moppet Thomas Sangster was the original pick for Tintin, before Universal’s cold feet meant he jumped ship. But in all honesty, we can’t help but think it was probably for the best, as the more robust figure of Jamie Bell has taken on the role of the intrepid adventurer.
Credit must go to Peter Jackson, who offered the role personally to Bell via a phone call. Spielberg for one is certain he’s got the right man for the job, waxing lyrical to the LA Times about how, “if Tintin makes you feel something, it’s Jamie Bell’s soul you’re sensing.”
And while we’re not quite sure about this “soul” malarkey, Bell looks like a perfect fit for the role. After all, he’s already well versed in working with WETA’s high-tech trickery from his turn in Jackson’s King-Kong , and would appear to be closer in age to the character than the younger Sangster. Whether his ballet skills will be needed has yet to be confirmed…
There's a British dream-team handling the script...
Whilst Jackson and Spielberg are names that ooze Hollywood, the script has got a distinctly British flavour to it. The first draft was knocked up by Coupling writer Stephen Moffat, only for him to turn his back on the project, and a reported $2 million payday, in favour of writing Dr. Who .
I know a lot of people won't understand it, but I've been dreaming of writing for Dr. Who since I was seven," Moffat told WENN. "There are no bad feelings between Spielberg and me, but Dr. Who has to come before Hollywood. I talked to Steven and he completely understood. Steven is a fan and he understood my passion for the series completely.”
However, whilst Moffat’s departure was a setback, there is a rather substantial silver-lining in the shape of Ant-Man scribblers Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, who have given the script a re-write. It’s a fairly leftfield choice on the face of it, but one that could prove inspired, with the pair likely to inject plenty of laughs into proceedings. After all, the books are full of comic moments, most of which stem from the bumbling Thom(p)son twins. And they will be played by none other than a pair of Wright’s old muckers…
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are Thompson and Thomson...
When it was announced that Hot Fuzz co-stars Pegg and Frost were to play a set of twins, more than a few eyebrows were raised, largely because they look nothing bloody like each other. However, now that Spielberg has fully explained the method behind his mo-cap, and Shaun of the Dead ’s Wright has been confirmed to write, it’s looking like a masterstroke!
Pegg for one was blown away by the technology. “You can actually see yourself as your character on the monitor,” he told Collider earlier this year. “Even though it’s nowhere near as brilliant as it’s going to be in the finished thing, it’s still like a very good N64 game of yourself!”
Working with Spielberg was also a buzz, with Pegg revealing the director’s hands-on nature where his cast are concerned. “I had to do some rough-housing on the floor,” he said, “and Steven got down and demonstrated, literally grabbed me by the lapels and banged me up and down on the floor. I’ve never been so happy to have been beaten up in my life.”
As mentioned before, the twins will likely provide a lot of the comic relief. “They’re two undercover detectives, who think they’re the bollocks,” says Pegg, “but they’re actually bumbling fools, and they always get it wrong. They’re great, fun characters to play.”
Andy Serkis is Captain Haddock...
Jamie Bell isn’t the only Jackson alumnus on the scene, with Mr. Mo-cap himself, Andy Serkis, signed on to play whisky-soaked sea-dog Captain Haddock. In fairness, they could probably ditch the lycra in Serkis’ case, given that he’s already a dead ringer for the salty sailor.
Unsurprisingly, given his familiarity with the technology, Serkis is only too happy to talk up the look of the film, telling IGN that, “ Tintin will bring Hergé to life, and performance-capture is the perfect tool.”
That said, the process was novel even for Serkis, with Tintin throwing up a different set of challenges from projects like LOTR or King Kong .
“There's definitely a difference between a performance capture character in a live action movie and a fully animated world, like in Tintin ,” he says. “In Tintin , the actors are on set all engaging with each other in the same paradigm. It looks very much like Hergé brought to life.”
Sounds good to us. And who knows, maybe one day Jackson will cast him in a role where we actually get to see his face…
Daniel Craig leads an ace supporting cast...
The film’s intriguing ensemble will get a boost of star power in the shape of 007 himself, with Daniel Craig having signed on to play the dastardly Red Rackham, a seafaring villain with links to Captain Haddock’s ancestors.
Meanwhile, Toby Jones will appear in the quirky role of light-fingered civil servant Aristedes Silk, whilst Mackenzie Crook also adds to the film’s distinctly British feel as a smuggler. Hopefully the latter will not be another Pirates -esque comedy character, or at least not one with a “hilarious” glass eye.
Watch out also for a small role for Cary Elwes, as an unnamed pilot. That’s right, cuddly old Steven Spielberg has found room in his new family romp for a man best remembered for hacking his leg off in grisly gore-fest Saw . Wonders will never cease…
The film will condense the character's most famous saga...
The first movie will be entitled The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of The Unicorn and will cover one of the most famous storylines from the graphic novels. Wright and Cornish have condensed events from three of Hergé’s stories ( The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure ) in order to introduce the major characters, but also provide a meaty adventure in which to showcase them.
The plot will follow intrepid journalist Tintin as he meets Captain Haddock for the first time, and finds himself embroiled with gun-fights, pirates and a quest to recover some long-buried treasure. All of which sounds suitably rip-roaring and Boys Own for a Steven Spielberg yarn!
One potential snag that has been mooted is the unfamiliarity of the character with the American market, but Simon Pegg is certain that the film will win over a legion of new fans Stateside.
“There’s been some talk about how nobody knows who Tintin is,” he told Collider recently, “but it’s a very odd thing to say because nobody knew who Indiana Jones was in 1979! Tintin is a great, great adventure story.”
Spielberg is director, but Jackson was never far away...
Shooting was wrapped up in fairly brisk fashion, with Spielberg presiding over just 32 days of filming before wrapping in March 2009. Jackson was on set for the first week, but with work on The Lovely Bones calling him back to New Zealand, was forced to innovate to make his presence felt.
“Steven would be on set, and Peter would be in New Zealand, via iChat, watching the shooting,” said Simon Pegg. “So if he had anything to add, this voice would come over the tannoy… ‘hello guys it’s Peter’!” A little disconcerting at first then, but apparently it worked a treat.
“Steven and Peter work so well together,” he said. “With two big directors like that you could be forgiven for thinking their egos would clash…but impossibly, it worked!”
So far so good then, but if filming has been completed for over a year, how much longer are we going to have to wait to see the quiff-tastic reporter up on the silver screen? Well, therein lies the rub we’re afraid…
The film is set to land in December 2011...
Yep, that’s right, we’ll still have to wait over a year to see the completed film. That’s because whilst the nuts and bolts of the film are in place (ie the motion-captured performances), WETA have still got plenty of work to do whipping up the CGI world the characters will inhabit.
“ Tintin is great,” Jackson told the BBC last year. “It’s made. The movie is cut together and now (we) are turning it into a fully-rendered film… So the movie, to some degree, exists in a very rough state.” Sounds like Jackson will have to earn his corn on the production side of things then, with Spielberg taking his turn behind an iChat monitor to keep an eye on things.
Meanwhile, Jackson has a few ideas in mind for where he wants to take the second film in the series, although when exactly he will find time to do that could depend on what happens with The Hobbit .
“I’m partial to The Seven Crystal Balls (and) Prisoners of the Sun was always one of my favourites,” Jackson told MTV . “I’m keeping my options open. We haven’t nailed it down just yet. I’m going to reread all the Tintin books again.”
One storyline he has rejected however, is Tintin’s adventure into space. “No moon (landing) for the second one," says Jackson, "But I think the moon one (s) would be great to do as a third or fourth film. I think we should stay on Earth for the second one. We don’t start writing that script until next year when we’re done with the Hobbit script, so I’ve got a little bit of time to change my mind.”
A slow-burning project all round then, but that’s generally how Jackson likes to work. And if another year of anticipation means we end up with an adventure saga of the quality of LOTR , then it will definitely have been worth the wait.
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