Caffeinated Clint
Dreamworks’ to do three “Tintin” movies
Finally, some concrete news on long-discussed endlessly rumoured much-mooted “Tintin” movie.
History’s most popular red-head (The Linsday Lohan fan club have just started on their emails) will make his live-action feature film debut in a new movie from Steven Spielberg – who has been hanging onto the property for a while now – and fantasy king Peter Jackson.
According to Variety, Dreamworks will do three “Tintin” films, with both Spielberg and Jackson both putting their hands up to direct an instalment of the series. The movies will be made using 3-D using performance capture technology.
Jackson’s New Zealand-based WETA Digital, the f/x house behind “The Lord of the Rings” franchise, produced a 20-minute test reel bringing to life the characters created by Remi, who wrote under the pen name of Herge.
“Herge’s characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul which goes far beyond anything we’ve seen to date with computer animated characters,” Spielberg said.
“We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Herge created,” Spielberg continued.
Interestingly enough, Jackson just signed a deal with Dreamworks’ to produce and distribute his highly-anticipated “Lovely Bones” movie. Funny how these things come about huh?
Spielberg and Jackson have selected three stories from Berge’s “The Adventures of Tintin” series, which encompassed 23 books published between 1929 and 1976. The series still attracts 2 million new fans a year.
The series, which has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, chronicles adventures of a junior reporter who will follows stories to the ends of the earth, even though he often finds his own life in jeopardy. His able assistants include a white dog named Snowy, the lunatic Captain Haddock, the muddled genius Professor Calculus and the Thompson Twins.
I know I’ve read a couple of “Tintin” comics over the years – I remember a couple of kids, back in my school days, who were obsessed with the series – but I couldn’t for the life of me remember which editions… what stories and so on. I know that there’s potential there for a film series, though. It could be.
Uber-beard number #2 Jackson said his design domain WETA will stay true to the original designs in bringing the cast of Tintin to life, but that the characters won’t look cartoonish.
“Instead,” Jackson said, “we’re making them look photorealistic; the fibers of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people –but real Herge people!”
Now, of course, all the bloody “Tintin” casting rumours are going to start up again – some chap named Kirsten Myburgh was mentioned as being a frontrunner for a while; “Everwood” star Gregory Smith was too – but I dare say it’ll be a while until they actually announce something official on that subject. Shit, Andy Serkis could end up playing the bloody part.
