As the 32 days of principal production on Tintin come to a close, Variety have done a new piece on the film which yields a lot of matters for discussion. None of this is Hold The Front Page! stuff, but it's still packed with surprises. The overall impression is that Peter Jackson will be exerting rather a large amount of control over the first Tintin film, even though Steven Spielberg is the credited director.
I'll run up a list of bullet points after the break.
Spielberg will be handing the data accumulated on set over the last few weeks – we can't exactly call it footage – to Peter Jackson, and it's Jackson who will be shepherding the film through post production.
This is apparently not your typical motion capture production as the technology used "really can't be described" and you would "have to see it to understand". According to Kathleen Kennedy, the typical reaction to the tech is "Oh my god".
It's implied that Jackson was hands-on during rehearsals and the first week of shooting. He's also credited with the recruitment of Jamie Bell in the lead role.
Jackson is currently "sketching out ideas" for the second film and may script, or may hand off to "Moffat, Wright and Cornish" – though they're likely to have their hands full, I think. There are time travelers, hipsters and ant men to be taking care of.
The countries for which Sony will be handling distribution tend to be those in which Tintin has a reputation; Paramount will be starting with a relatively blank slate in their territories.
The sequel hasn't yet been given a greenlight.
The way that motion capture works, Jackson will have an awful lot of control over the coming months. In theory at least – who knows what agreement exists between the two directors? The post producton flexibility inherent in such a project is encouraging, however, particularly when you have two directors to argue out every detail before anything is settled upon.
