I am, as a result, thoroughly excited about the upcoming trilogy of motion-capture films featuring Tintin and his entire supporting cast, including his dog Snowy, my favorite character from the series Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, and the bumbling English detectives Thompson and Thomson.
These are movies that have been a long, long time in the making as producer/director Steven Spielberg has long held the option on the movies, which is just as well because now the motion capture technology which is being used to film it has matured to the point that realizing Tintin on the big screen in a manner faithful to Herge's striking visuals is now entirely possible. Neither a straight live-action nor a hand-drawn adaptation, in my opinion, would have captured Herge's extraordinary eye for detail, not for the kind of budgets Hollywood is used to working with, and motion capture and CGI is simply the way to go. Who better to pull this off than Spielberg himself, one of original the masters of visual effects-laden films (ignoring the shoddiness of the CGI in the last Indiana Jones movie, of course)? Well, as if that was not enough he has chosen to collaborate with Peter Jackson, whose work in motion capture for the LOTR trilogy and King Kong were groundbreaking, and apparently dazzling enough to get Spielberg to forgo his usual collaboration with his usual F/X vendor Industrial Light and Magic for this series.
I love the casting as well from Jamie Bell (of Billy Elliot and King Kong fame) as Tintin himself to Andy Serkis (who achieved worldwide fame as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies) as Captain Haddock to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) as Thomson and Thompson.
The films are a long way off (the first to be released in December 2011) which is good because it will give its distributors Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures plenty of time to market the film, which may well prove a hard sell in the United States despite having the names of Spielberg and Jackson attached. Tintin is kind of like Formula 1, loved in the rest of the world but ignored in America, so their ability to put butts in the seats will be almost purely down to the two directors' drawing power rather than any goodwill the character may have in America.
The distributors recognize the risks involved in this production; rather than the usual U.S./rest of the world split, Paramount and Sony appear to be splitting the distribution territories around the world equally, with Paramount perhaps recognizing that the film may, in spite of everything, flounder in the U.S. market and therefore wanting to hedge its bets with a couple of other territories. Well, the studios can play poker all they want, as long as they give Spielberg and Jackson free rein to make my most anticipated comic-book movie since the first Spider-Man. I know I'll be lining up for this one.
2 comments:
I don't think that marketing Tintin in America will be hard.
Just because Tintin has never caught on in the states, it doesn't mean that America is anti-Tintin.
At the time Tintin was first translated into English, the US had its own very vibrant comics industry. The colours and formats of Herge's books were very different from the US idea of comic book so it is not surprising that Tintin has remained only a minor figure in the US.
A film is different. Going to see Tintin will be no different from seeing a Pixar film. It will stand or fall entirely on its own merits, not because of its European heritage.
Chris
http://TintinMovie.org
I sure hope you're right buddy; I'd like more than anything for this project to succeed.
I'm basing my apprehensions on the reactions of the admittedly not-necessarily-representative internet community, with a lot of posters/talkbackers on popular sites like aintitcoolnews.com basically saying "who's Tintin?"
It's not that America is anti-Tintin (and I certainly didn't say that anywhere in my post); it's just that apparently he never caught on there the way other comic book characters have, possibly for the reason you just cited among other things. Ironically, a lot of my Tintin books were brought over by my aunt from America, though they were all printed in Belgium and translated by Brits. So Tintin is clearly available over there but for some reason has not quite resonated with readers that much.
I think the F1 analogy fits here. I mean, the United States even HOSTED a Formula One race for many, many years but F1 has never attained the popularity of NASCAR or Indy Racing for reasons not entirely clear. The exposure to the sport is there, but the eager reception is not. That doesn't make America anti-F1; but it clearly isn't appreciated there the way it is in the rest of the world, where it's apparently the most viewed sport on television.
Anyway, I hope that however Americans feel about Tintin now, enthusiastic, lukewarm or otherwise, they come to embrace him and his wacky supporting cast come December 23, 2011.
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