Category Archives: peter jackson

Peter Jackson at Comic Con – anyone going?

According to The New York Times, Peter Jackson will attend the July 2009 Comic-Con in San Diego. While he will be there in support of the upcoming movie, “District 9″, I am hoping that fans are going to ask him about “The Secret of the Unicorn”. If you or someone you know is attending, I would love to hear about it or see some photos. Puhleeeeeze!

The Tintin movie so far

Seven months ago, the first reports of the upcoming Tintin movie, The Secret of the Unicorn,  started trickling out. Much of the discussion to date has been centered around cast members, financing problems, scripts, and the technical aspects of the production. Finally, the movie has a U.S. release date of December 23, 2011 and readers deserve a more concise report on exactly what this movie is about.

The general plot

The Secret of the Unicorn is considered by many to be one of the first truly great Tintin adventures. It is part mystery, part pirate tale, and part treasure hunt. The story begins…

Read the rest of the article at my Examiner page.

Nick Frost on Tintin – “most stressful thing I’ve ever done”

simon-pegg-nick-frostIn an interview with The Guardian Nick Frost (Hot FuzzShaun of the Dead) spoke a little about working on The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn withSteven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.

Nick finds acting difficult because he doesn’t have the back-up of training. On the Tintin film, the script kept changing, to such an extent that he and Simon were sometimes handed their words just minutes before they went on. “I need a week to really get a scene into my head. And you’ve got Steven Spielberg and Kathy Kennedy, who’s the most powerful woman in Hollywood, and Peter Jackson, who’s co-directing from New Zealand using iChat! It was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done. Having said that, Spielberg was amazing. Sometimes he’d run on at the end of a scene and do a little dance and punch the air.”

Spielberg recently finished the performance-capture stuff and Peter Jackson is now working on the special effects for 18 months with WETA in New Zealand.

Thanks to Filmonic for this post.

Tintin in 3-D

According to the Seattle Times, the upcoming Tintin movies (to be released in 2011) are going to be released both in the traditional 2-d format and in the new 3-d format. Here’s the quote:

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have announced that they will direct the first two installments of the franchise “The Adventures of Tintin,” to be filmed in 3-D motion capture. The first film, “Secret of the Unicorn,” is set for release in 2011.

It is going to be weird enough to see Tintin on the big screen. Not sure how I feel about seeing him in 3-d.

Time Out Tintin

I just ran across this article in Time Out London. Thought I would share. It’s a good recap of all the recent Tintin movie news – with an English spin. Enjoy!

Author: Tom Huddleston

Spielberg and Jackson’s ‘Tintin’ is go! Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are hard at work on their mammoth ‘Tintin’ trilogy We’ve known for a while that a trilogy of Tintin movies was on its way: the first to be directed by Steven Spielberg, the second by Peter Jackson, and the third by an as-yet-unnamed lucky winner.

We were surprised, however, to learn this week that shooting on the first movie, ‘The Secret of the Unicorn’, has been completed. Spielberg and crew just wrapped an under-the-radar 32-day run of performance capture sessions with the principal cast, which includes Jamie Bell as our plucky, bequiffed hero and Daniel Craig as his nemesis Red Rackham. Rounding out the cast are motion capture stalwart Andy Serkis as seafaring boozehound Captain Haddock, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bumbling Thompson twins and the ubiquitous Mackenzie Crook as an unnamed, but surely villainous sidekick type character. There’s no word yet on how much of the actors’ physical performances will remain in the finished film: Pegg and Frost, for example, are playing identical twins, which is going to require a fair amount of digital trickery.

And here’s where things get interesting. By all accounts, Spielberg’s part in the proceedings is largely over: the mo-cap footage he shot will now be transported to New Zealand, where Jackson and his WETA digital team will oversee the translation from live action to digital animation. The film’s producers insist that Spielberg will be credited as the film’s sole director and that he will oversee the final cut by way of a video conferencing system, but they also insist that this is a groundbreaking collaboration where the lines between director, producer and special effects team are uniquely blurred.

As if all this wasn’t enough, Time Out’s interest was also piqued by the film’s scriptwriting team, a bizarre dream team of British film and TV talent: Steven Moffat is a current ‘Doctor Who’ alumnus who also brought us the best-forgotten ‘Jekyll’ series, while Edgar Wright is, of course, the writer-director behind such homegrown hits as ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz’ (and surely an obvious choice to take the helm on the mysterious third episode). And rounding out the team? Yes, it’s Joe Cornish, the tall posh one in still surprisingly funny comedy duo Adam and Joe. It’s a long uphill trek from DIY stuffed-toy remakes of ‘Trainspotting’ to collaborating with Steven Spielberg, but it couldn’t happen to a more deserving chap. Except, possibly, Joe’s rounder, hairier and – dare we say it? – slightly funnier compadré Adam Buxton. Come on, Spielberg, how about ‘The Adventures of Ken Korda’?