In case further proof was needed that time is a construct, somehow it has been fifteen years — yes, FIFTEEN years — since Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn hit cinemas, bringing Hergé’s bequiffed reporter/adventurer and his adorable dog Snowy to a whole new generation. But despite the movie being a critical and commercial smash, all these years later we find ourselves still pining for the Tintin 2 that never quite materialised. And here’s a plot-twist: Peter Jackson’s still down for it, too. In fact, he’s working on it right now.
As Screen Daily reports, Jackson — who’s currently at the Cannes Film Festival having just received an honorary Palme d’Or on the fest’s opening night — revealed during a career-spanning Rendezvous session this morning that not only is he still working on a Tintin sequel, but he’s even been writing it while on the French Riviera. “I’ve been working with Fran [Walsh, Jackson’s screenwriting partner] on another Tintin script, I was writing it in the hotel room here,” shared Jackson. “It’s an active real thing, and I’m getting back into the Tintin world, and I actually love it.”
What’s more, all being well, the plan is for Jackson to helm the Tintin sequel himself, honouring a pact he made with the first movie’s director, Steven Spielberg, when The Secret Of The Unicorn came out. “The deal was that Steven directs one and I direct another,” Jackson, producer of that first film, revealed during his talk. “Steven did his film, then for 15 years I haven’t made mine. I feel very awkward about that.”
Right now, we don’t know anything further about the sequel than that Jackson is working on it. It was at one point subtitled Prisoners Of The Sun, referencing Hergé’s 14th Tintin adventure, which involved some magical crystal balls and a hidden Incan civilisation — but that title is over a decade old at this point and may well have changed. Still, should Jackson’s long, long gestating Tintin sequel plans come to fruition, Tintin 2 — or 2 Tin 2 Tin as nobody is calling it — will mark the New Zealand filmmaker’s first foray into narrative feature filmmaking since 2015’s The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies. Here’s hoping this film turns out a little better than one, eh? In Peter Jackson we trust.
