Starting events this Friday at Comic-Con was The Adventure of Tintin Panel, the adaptation of popular Belgian comic book series and one of the highly anticipated movies of this holiday season.
Leading this panel was director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson, on a break from filming The Hobbit. The panel had the usual of a trailer and a clip from the movie to please audiences before getting down to talking about the filmmaking process and what attracted them to the project.
Both men joked about their friendship; Jackson believes Spielberg shows some promise as a director. They are both fans of the series. Jackson has been since he was a boy and wanted to make it for the kid inside him, whereas Spielberg became a fan as an adult. Spielberg became aware of the series when he read a French review in 1981 of Raiders of the Lost Ark, comparing his classic movie to Tintin. He has owned the film rights since 1983. Spielberg being a traditionalist director working with film, used a digital camera for a change. He described that the use of motion capture and digital cameras allowed him to film action sequences that he could not do in a live-action movie.
Jackson and Spielberg decided to adapt “The Secret of the Unicorn” for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was the exciting murder mystery and a treasure hunt elements of the story. Secondly, it was the first story that brought Tintin (Jamie Bell, whose Spielberg states is Tintin through and through) and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) together for the first time. They did not mention this, but that some of the early Tintin books had negative racial stereotypes of Russians, Africans and Jews. Please remember they were written in the 1930s and these attitudes were sadly more socially acceptable.
As well as talking about the upcoming film, Jackson states he has 300 days left of filming for The Hobbit and both answered audience questions.
Spielberg said his favorite movie to direct was E.T., his favorite producing experience was the "Back to the Future" trilogy and of all the films he's produced, he would have liked to direct American Beauty. Spielberg also confirmed a little nugget that a fourth "Jurassic Park" has a story and a writer and he hopes that it will be made in two or three years. Whether we want to see a fourth “Jurassic Park” movie is a different manner.
The Adventures of Tintin will be released on Dec. 23 in North America, but as a Brit I get to see it on Oct. 26. As a fan of the cartoon series in the '90s and having read a couple of the books, I will be going to see this motion-capture event.