Peter Jackson & Steven Spielberg Join Forces to Produce Tintin Trilogy

Our two favorite directors, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg have revealed that they are working together to direct and produce a series of three-films based on the comic-strip hero Tintin from the series of Beligian comic books known as The Adventures of Tintin.

Tintin is a young Belgian reporter and world traveler who is aided in his never-ending adventures by his faithful dog, Snowy. Through-out the stories more memorable characters become a regular, such as Captain Haddock, a seafaring captain of disputed ancestry ; Professor Cuthbert Calculus, an easily distracted hard of hearing physicist; bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson, who look like twins but actually are not even related; and the ever so fabulous Bianca Castafiore, an opera singer. Various other characters pop up here and there as well. Tintin and several characters travel all around the world, and even touch bases with the moon in a two-part adventure!

There has been 22 Tintin titles, all created by Belgian artist Georges Rem, whose pen name was Herge. The comic was at first only in French, but now the stories are available in over 50 languages, and more than 200 million copies of the books sold to date. On March 3, 1983, Herge died and left his 24th Tintin story, Tintin and Akog-Art, unfinished.

Spielberg has attempted to secure the film rights to the comic series for years, and finally successfully secured the rights in the past twelve months. He also revealed that Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of The Lord of the Tings trilogy, has already developed a test film.

"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," Steven 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."

"We're making them look photo realistic," Peter Jackson added."The fibers of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people -- but real Herge people."

Three stories from the 23 Tintin books published between 1929 and 1979 have been chosen by Spielberg and Jackson to be shown as a film trilogy. So far it is said that the film-makers would direct at least one of the films each, and serve as producers on all three.