Today brings good news and bad news for fans eagerly awaiting The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, the first film in a proposed trilogy of new, motion-capture animated 3D films co-produced by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson (among others) based on the comic book series created by Georges "Hergé" Remi. Spielberg took up directorial duties on the first in the series, which was supposed to begin filming in 2008 for a 2010 release, but Universal, burned by the under-performance of Beowulf and Monster House at the box office, decided to pull out in the pre-production process, halting progress until Paramount could partner with Sony in order to grease the gears financially. Not much has popped up in the news department since then, however at the London premiere of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, the Lord of the Rings director told reporters that filming had finally been completed on Spielberg's Tintin entry. However, it's still no where close to release. Jackson went on to say that it is going to take another two years to actually animate the film, meaning fans are most likely looking at a late 2011 release date for The Secret of the Unicorn.
Though Spielberg was the one bossing around stars Jamie Bell, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Daniel Craig, Cary Elwes, and Andy Serkis on set, it'll be Jackson who takes over the bulk of the day-to-day post-production duties as he oversees the animation being done by Weta Workshop. And though Jackson will be spending far more time directly working on the project than Spielberg, who was only on set for the month it took to capture the performances, it'll be the latter who gets sole credit as director. However, when the film's still-untitled sequel comes out, Jackson will be handling both the on-set and virtual aspects of bringing the world of Tintin to life.
But if it's going to take two years to animate Speilberg's, don't expect Jackson's Tintin any time soon.
1. This is complete and utter nonsense written by a person who has no idea what he is talking about. First of all, it was Spielberg not Jackson who not only supervised and captured the performances but ALSO supervised the editing and turned in at least 3 progressively more complete cuts, the last of which arrived a few days earlier.
(if you remember Jackson commented on flying to see Spielberg's first cut a month or so ago).
The very fact that Jackson already commented that movie already exists in rough form sans renderring is a testament that it's Spielberg's movie and there is no need to create any ambiguity here.
Jaskson involvement in post-production has nothing to do with actual DIRECTING. Even Miyazaki has separately credited and full fledged animation directors on his films but this doesn't change the fact that it is his vision that they are executing.
Sheer amount of time spent has nothing to do with anything. I'm sure some low level technician would have them all beat. THERE IS A REASON why Spielberg is a sole credited director.
Jackson and Spielberg too, of course, are also producers of the film and there is absolutely no truth to your statement that Steven abandoned the project after the filming wrapped. He is and very much will be work on it before it's actual relase both as the director and producer.
More importantly there are NO bad news in that article as we already knew it would come out in 2011 (really weak) and forgetting that Image Rendeering takes time. Seriously, the fact that you managed to fail to quote anything of worth and that isn't pure speculation is simply irresponsible.
And good job missing the most important thing, Peter saying the movie is GREAT!
I cannot wait to see it.
Posted at 9:02PM on Nov 24th 2009 by Proman