Peter Jackson is Finally Returning to the World of TINTIN
Back in 2011, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson teamed up to bring The Adventures of Tintin to the big screen, turning Hergé’s beloved comic series into a globe-trotting motion-capture adventure.
The original plan sounded pretty awesome at the time. Spielberg would direct the first movie, Jackson would take over for the sequel, and the two filmmakers would swap producer duties. Then… nothing happened.
Now, after years of fans wondering if the sequel had been abandoned for good, Jackson has confirmed that he’s officially back working on Tintin.
While appearing at the Cannes Film Festival this week, Jackson revealed that he and longtime collaborator Fran Walsh are actively writing a new script.
“I’ve been working with Fran [Walsh] on another Tintin script, I was writing it in the hotel room here,” Jackson said. “It’s an active real thing, and I’m getting back into the Tintin world, and I actually love it.”
That’s the most movement this franchise has seen in a very long time, and it sounds like Jackson is genuinely excited to dive back into the adventurous universe of Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock.
Jackson also admitted he feels a little weird about how long the sequel has taken to materialize after the promise he and Spielberg made years ago.
“The deal was that Steven directs one and I direct another,” said Jackson. “Steven did his film, then for 15 years, I haven’t made mine. I feel very awkward about that.”
To be fair, Jackson hasn’t exactly been sitting around during those 15 years. He spent a huge chunk of that time making The Hobbit trilogy, while also directing acclaimed documentaries like They Shall Not Grow Old and The Beatles: Get Back. Still, Tintin remained one of those projects fans would occasionally bring up and wonder if it would ever actually happen.
The first film pulled in around $374 million worldwide, which was respectable, but not quite the kind of box office total studios usually sprint toward when greenlighting a sequel with a massive visual effects budget.
Reports at the time estimated the movie cost roughly $135 million to produce, making the follow-up a less urgent priority for Hollywood.
But things have changed since 2011. Performance capture technology has evolved a lot, and the filmmaking tools needed to create a movie like Tintin are far more accessible now than they were when Spielberg made the original. That could finally make this sequel easier to pull off creatively and financially.
At the moment, there’s no release date, no production timeline, and no confirmation that this will even be Jackson’s next directing project. He’s currently attached as a producer on upcoming The Lord of the Rings films, but he isn’t locked in to direct anything specific right now.
Which means there’s actually a decent chance that the next feature film directed by Peter Jackson could finally be the long-awaited return of Tintin, and I’m excited to see it!