The Adventures of Tintin Will Continue With A Sequel
15 years later, Peter Jackson is taking the helm on a new movie.
The passage of time is a scary thing, especially for a director with plenty of ideas in his head. That goes double for someone like Peter Jackson, the visionary behind so many epic big-screen adventures. Though he’s produced plenty in the past decade, Jackson hasn’t really been behind the camera in 11 years, since completing The Hobbit trilogy in 2014. That’s a shame, as he had plenty in the pipeline around that time — the most exciting being a sequel to 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin; which, back then, was written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish. But this time, Jackson is taking a crack at it.
Speaking at a Cannes Rendezvous session this week, Jackson looked back on the original plan for the Tintin films. He’d partnered with Steven Spielberg, who held the rights to the French adventure comics, to co-produce what would have been a trilogy. “The deal was that Steven directs one and I direct another,” Jackson revealed. Spielberg held up his end of the bargain — but “for 15 years, I haven’t made mine,” the filmmaker continued. “I feel very awkward about that.”
Fortunately, it’s not too late to make good on that original promise. Jackson revealed that he’s working with his partner, Fran Walsh, on that long-awaited sequel. “I was writing it in the hotel room here. It’s an active, real thing,” Jackson told the audience at Cannes. “I’m getting back into the Tintin world.”
Jackson is “getting back into the Tintin world” with a new sequel.
There’s no telling whether this new film will kickstart the trilogy that was originally planned, but it’s enough to see this saga continuing for now. The Adventures of Tintin was a technical marvel when it premiered in 2011, combining traditional 3D animation and motion-capture technology to create a true visual marvel. Unlike earlier efforts like The Polar Express, which couldn’t escape the uncanny valley, Tintin struck the perfect balance between surreal and true-to-life. And the technology used to bring these characters from their comics and into that wacky live-action/animation hybrid has only gotten more powerful in the intervening years. Whatever story Jackson intends to tell with its sequel, it’s safe to expect something even more inventive.
Tintin follows the adventures of its titular journalist (voiced by Jamie Bell), who teams up with a swarthy sea captain (Andy Serkis) to retrieve the fabled treasure of a lost ship, the Unicorn. It takes inspiration from three different volumes of Tintin adventures, but there were plenty written by Tintin’s creator, Hergé, so much so that Jackson might be spoiled for choice. Though he didn’t reveal which Tintin story will serve as the foundation for his upcoming film, it’s safe to say we won’t have to wait long to find out.
