While the domestic box office for "The Adventures Of Tintin" barely made it over $75 million — a disappointment to be sure — internationally, the film slayed and the worldwide box office topped off at just over $370 million, which isn't too bad. A sequel has always been the plan, with Peter Jackson saying last year he'd get behind the camera for the movie once he was done with "The Hobbit," which we always figured meant once he wrapped up those two massive pictures entirely (he's still in the midst of the lengthy production). But recent comments by the first film's director Steven Spielberg suggest everyone could get into mo-cap suits as early as this year.
Catching up with Total Film, Spielberg updated about the sequel: “Peter [Jackson]’s doing it. I wanted to do it, but Peter has to because we made a deal. I said, ‘I’ll direct the first one, you direct the second one.’ And Peter, of course, is going to do it right after he finishes photography on 'The Hobbit.' He’ll go right into the 31, 21 days of performance capture."
The key words to note there are "finishes photography" — currently, "The Hobbit" is slated to roll through July before filming is wrapped, so could Jackson take a quick breather from Middle Earth to dash off the mo-cap work? It's certainly feasible. As Spielberg noted last year, a script and storyboards are already finished, "So we can launch pretty quickly on a second movie." And really, the mo-cap work is the easiest part of the 'Tintin' process as it's the extensive post-production animation that eats up the most time. So, we'll have to see if Jamie Bell and the rest of the gang book tickets to New Zealand for the summer, but it seems plans are coming togther.
As for what it will be about, Spielberg is playing coy, even if producer Kathleen Kennedy teased that "The Calculus Affair" would form the foundation of the followup.“We haven’t decided that yet. She’s throwing a monkey wrench into your story! It could be that," he said. "I like 'The Calculus Affair.' So it could be. We have completed a story outline now. We have a writer on it. I’m just not declaring what it is. It will be more than one book, but no more than two.”
Hmm…so maybe that script isn't quite finished, but it seems everyone is happy with where it's going. More to come we're sure, but it seems the "The Adventures Of Tintin" sequel could be started sooner than we thought.