Tintin movie! Tintin movie! TINTIN MOVIE!

There's a Tintin movie, and it's being written by Steven Moffat, who also wrote many of the best new Doctor Who episodes. Oh, this is good news.

In the comics, Tintin is a young Belgian reporter and world traveler who is aided in his adventures by his faithful dog Snowy. He later was joined by such colorful characters as Captain Haddock, Professor Cuthbert Calculus and bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson.
Kathleen Kennedy is serving as producer on the three feature films, which will be made using performance-capture technology and produced in digital 3-D. Jackson and Spielberg are each directing an installment, with the helmer of the third movie to be determined.

Link (via Making Light)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Ape Lad

I love Tintin, but “performance capture” means I will probably not even bother with this film. I cannot stand that garbage. Animation is about caricaturing life, not recreating it with ping pong ball suits.
There’s no reason this shouldn’t be hand drawn.
anangbhai

Actually, I’m hoping the mo-cap will be used to enhance the animation. Think “Monster House” rather than the dead eye Polar express or Beowulf. Mo-cap isn’t bad, but I feel like zemeckis and his crew are using it in a singular way much like CGI is used nowadays in action sequences. Both should be used to enhance the scene, add some flair, not as a showpiece of technology. The days of Jurassic Park are long gone, people won’t be simply astonished nowadays and we’re all jaded moviegoers.
Aside from Monster House (where the human models had a specific artistic look) also look at the films of Guillermo Del Toro from Blade 2 onward or Alfonso Cuaron’s films.
Since Peter “Braindead” Jackson will be producing, I’d like to think the movie will be fellowship good and not Return of the King (legolas on an elephant) good.
GaryG

For the record, there have been plenty of ’2D’ animated films and series before, some based on the original books, some on original scripts.

Though I doubt this new version will scale the heights of the 60s, live action versions (only being *slightly* sarcastic :))

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055526/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058663/
Shrdlu

Santos,

Have you ever seen Tiny Toons? ‘Nuff said.

Shrdlu
gobo

The idea of a mo-cap 3D Tintin sounds so wrongheaded and creepy that I’m reserving judgement. If this was Zemeckis, I’d write this off right now… and Spielberg doesn’t get a free pass either, after Transformers. But I trust Peter Jackson enough as a filmmaker to wait until I see what they come up with here.

As Ape Lad points out, there’s no reason this shouldn’t be hand drawn, so for two admitted Tintin fans to make this in 3D tells me that they’ve either beaten the Uncanny Valley effect or are doing it because mo-cap is the new hotness these days. I hope it’s the former.
Shrdlu

You’re hardly a Luddite. I am a fan of HergÃ© and the old animated series, but I couldn’t be less interested in any motion-capture animation production. That’s sort of akin chamber music played on a synthesizer. And with Jackson and Spielberg directing, you can bet it will be technically overwrought and devoid of the charm of the Tintin series.

My money is on George Lucas as the third director.
Thorzdad

Yeahhhh…count me in the “bad feeling about this” camp.
Spielberg might be “a lifelong fan of The Adventures of Tintin”, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily going to avoid the full Spielberg treatment…over-the-top special effects, loud and predictable John Williams score, and a runaway-roller-coaster “adventure” that bears no resemblance to an actual Tintin story.
Apparently all in mo-cap 3d.
Whee!
worn_pass

Since it was written by Moffat, can we expect to see Tintin fight the Melty Man?
Flying Squid

I guess with TinTin, you can’t complain about the lack of expressive eyes in motion capture animation…
Emiledgar

Ever since I heard about this when I was in Brussels a couple months ago, I’ve have been in the “this is going to be really awful” camp.
Growing up in Brussels I thought that Tintin was old fashioned and I much preferred the adventures of Spirou and Fantasio, but I always appreciated the superb graphic work of Herge. And considering that he single-handedly created the comic strip in book form, any movie version of his work needs to be very sensitively done. Subtle is not the first adjective that pops to mind when one thinks of Spielberg.
Stefan Jones

#7: OMG, live action Tintin movies from the early ’60s?

I remember the ’60s vintage cartoons. They were serialized on American TV. But I never knew about the live action movies. Dang!

So, are they going to outfit a dog in a motion capture suit to animate Snowy / Mileu?
bentleywg

(Apologies for the self-link)

#7: A while back I posted links to photos from the 60′s movies on my blog. Three of the links are now dead but the others are still good.
Santos

It would devoid of grace or charm? That depends on the script. “Clutch Cargo” and “Space Angel” worked because the writing was above average. Nelvana’s The Adventures of Tintin are available as are the books so no one is mind raping anyone’s childhood.

Tintin can be good as â€œ… Steven Spielberg, a lifelong fan of The Adventures of Tintin. Spielberg’s love of the character is thought to have influenced the atmosphere and lead characterization in his Indiana Jones trilogy …â€ but count me among those who’d hold their breath on this.
NoneMoreNegative

I was kinda hoping they’d use some of his earlier adventures, as blogged herein:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=63946957&blogID=287571640

Who wouldn’t want to see a rhino blown up with dynamite!? :)
Stacyj

Wow, that’s such cool news, it’s been a while since there’s been a movie idea I was really tickled with. My one disappointment is the idea of it being done in “digital 3D;” not to be all luddite-like but is anybody else seriously missing more traditional animation styles? I always liked TinTin’s art and would -love- to have seen a similar 2D style in the movie; doing it via CGI seems … wrong somehow, like taking this unique comic and its distinct visual style and giving it the increasingly genericized Shrek/Madagascar/Ant Bully look …

Eh, maybe I am a Luddite after all. I still miss hand-drawn (not that dadgum Flash-based stuff, by cracky), 2D animation, there’s not nearly enough of it out there these days IMO. Nevertheless the idea of a TinTin movie makes my day!
Gilbert Wham

If it makes you feel any better, here’s ‘Boro TinTin: http://ww2.m-pass.com/~tintin/videos.php
non-BB-gadget-account

oh, no… i feel the same trepidation i feel whenever someone announces a new William Gibson or Philip K Dick movie. like something i love is about to be devalued…
m1k3y

Moffat’s written my fave Who’s eps.. and did the kick-ass Jekyll.. let’s see what wonders he works with TinTin
stuart kaufman

This might interest you – from yesterday’s publisher’s weekly:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6485843.html?q=Tintin
Barry14

Got some links I found!!!

http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0983193/
http://pro.imdb.com/name/nm2638153/
http://www.kmyburgh.com/

Looking at these pages it looks like Kirsten Myburgh is rumored to be playing the part of Tintin in the Spielberg/Jackson film.

This is very exciting. Hope the movie is a good one.
Alden

I was kinda surprised when they announced Steven Moffat was writing the scripts – surely if they’re writing them from the original books, the plot and most of the dialogue is already going to be set. Is there going to be much for the writer to do?

OTOH, if there’s not a lot of actual work in it, it frees him up to write some more episodes of Doctor Who. :)