Spielberg's Tintin 'in the can'

KENT BLECHYNDEN/Dominion Post

DONE BUT NOT DUSTED: Peter Jackson says Stephen Spielberg's Tintin film is in the can.

Wellington producer Peter Jackson says Stephen Spielberg's Tintin film is in the can, but it will take two years for the computer animations to be completed.

"Tintin is great. It's made. The movie is cut together and now (we) are turning it into a fully-rendered film," Jackson told the BBC in London.

"So the movie, to some degree, exists in a very rough state."

Principal photography on the movie - The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn - got underway in January.

It was the first in a series of two or three films based on Tintin, whose first adventure created by George Remi, better known by his pen name Herge, appeared 80 years ago in January 1929.

Jackson was set to direct the second film in the series.

Both Jackson and Spielberg had previously indicated the Tintin adaptations featured groundbreaking computer animation technology.

Jackson had already won three Academy Awards as a director in 2004 for the final Lord Of The Rings film, The Return Of The King.

He is the producer of the two films telling The Hobbit on the big screen, and has handed over directorial duties to Guillermo Del Toro.

He stressed that there would be continuity between his films and Del Toro's.

"We're writing the screenplays with him, so in terms of the script, there is continuity," he said.

"We're writing Ian McKellen's dialogue just the same as we did in Lord Of The Rings. But Guillermo, being the director, will obviously take the script and interpret that and shoot his film. So that'll be interesting to see."

The Hobbit will not be filmed in 3D, despite the current vogue for the technology in the movie industry.

"Guillermo wants to shoot in 35mm, old-fashioned film, which suits me, because he wants to keep it in the same space as the original trilogy."

But Jackson gave a cautious welcome to 3D, saying it "only adds to the experience" of watching a movie.

"The only thing I get annoyed about is the image being a little dull.

"It does feel like you're looking at the movie with sunglasses on. But literally, that could just be about getting brighter bulbs in the projectors."

The film-maker is attending today's (NZ time) Royal gala premiere of his latest film, The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold's best-selling novel.

The Queen, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will attend the premiere alongside stars Saoirse Ronan, Susan Sarandon and Mark Wahlberg.

The film was originally supposed to be released in March 2008, but will now hit cinemas in January - prompting speculation that film company Paramount has Oscar hopes for the drama.

- NZPA