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A TIMELESS ADVENTURE MEETS TWO CONTEMPORARY MASTERS: Hergé, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson
In a series of heart-stopping adventures around the globe, the graphic novel character Tintin became a planetary sensation. The intrepid reporter with the funny coif and the courage to always do the right thing in the most suspenseful situations has ever since been a worldwide hero to young readers and a vivid inspiration to artists. The Tintin graphic novels, written and drawn by Georges Remi under the pen name Hergé, have crossed diverse cultures, multiple generations and even war-torn borders. A pop cultural phenomenon of lasting magnitude, they have been translated into more than 80 languages; and have sold more than 350 million copies . . . and counting.
Yet for all the far-flung places Tintin has traveled -- from Peru to Tibet to the moon -the one place he has yet to venture is the modern movie screen. That changes with The Adventures of Tintin, which not only brings the series to worldwide movie audiences for the first time but does so in an inventive new way that pushes the creative envelope of 21st Century storytelling while staying true to Hergé's inimitable and timeless visual style.
The source of the series' sustained power has always been the ways its scruffy, lovable characters and its passport to exotic lands and courageous battles against wrongdoers have tied together people who experienced his adventures with a common bond.
That's what happened with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who are brought together for the first time as collaborators by their passion for Hergé's tantalizing tales. Each came across Tintin at entirely different times and in divergent ways. Yet their passion for the characters' wide-open cinematic possibilities is the same. Neither could resist the excitement of trying to fuse the unbridled fun of Hergé's drawings with state-of-the-art movie technology and inspired, emotion-rich performances to create an original motion picture experience befitting of Tintin's vast legacy.
"Tintin is an eager reporter who chases fragments of clues that suddenly blow up into these amazing, globe-trotting adventures," Spielberg describes. "What makes him so intriguing is his relentless pursuit of the truth, although that always leads him down some treacherous paths. It often seems he's gotten himself into terrible trouble, but somehow, he finds a way out. From the first reading, I knew that Tintin and I were destined for some kind of collaboration."
Peter Jackson grew up with Tintin and had been influenced by his adventures. As a boy in New Zealand, long before he began a filmmaking career that includes the most lauded fantasy trilogy in movie history: The Lord of the Rings series, Jackson devoured each Tintin book he could get his hands on, even struggling through the French editions.
"When you're young, you can easily imagine yourself going on these adventures that Tintin gets himself into," Jackson notes. "They tap into that fundamental sense of adventure we all have."
Both men saw the cinematic potential of Tintin embedded in its DNA. "We were all struck by the fact that Hergé was telling stories through what were, in a sense, these beautiful storyboards that were simple, clear and forceful in their narrative power," says Spielberg's long-time partner, Kathleen Kennedy, who would ultimately pair up with Jackson to produce.
Spielberg first reached out to Hergé as early as 1983 - and found the Belgian artist deeply enthusiastic about placing his clever character in the filmmaker's hands. But tragically, Hergé passed away before the two could meet. Later, his widow, Fanny Rodwell, fulfilled his wishes, granting the rights to Spielberg.
"Hergé picked Steven as the only director he thought could do a film based on his work," says executive producer Stephane Sperry, who has been involved with the Tintin property for decades and a fan for even longer. "And Steven has always been respectful of that."
The filmmakers worked closely with Nick and Fanny Rodwell, consulting with the two careful custodians of Hergé's legacy and experts on all things Tintin. "The most important thing was to honor Hergé and get as close to his very unique sense of palette and portraiture as possible. Every single panel of his told a story in cinematic terms," observes the director. "There was kinetic energy in every pose and action, and it was almost as if he was trying to squeeze 24 frames into a single frame, and succeeding. That was, I think, the genius of Hergé. Each of his stories had the essence of a movie - and now we could be true to that."
Spielberg was convinced right away that Jackson was the ideal partner. "Peter told me, 'If you were here right now, you would see over my shoulder the entire series of Hergé's books, and I would love to be a part of this,'" Spielberg recalls. "And thus began our process of finding a way to capture that artistic style that so defines Hergé and Tintin, and bring it to the screen."
Jackson couldn't wait to tackle the task. "I was thrilled that Steven invited me onboard," he says. "Steven really is quite similar to the Tintin character," Jackson comments. "He's young at heart. He's very curious. He has a great love of adventure, and his sense of humor pretty much matches what Hergé brought to Tintin. It's a perfect match."
In addition to serving as producer for the first film, Spielberg asked Jackson if he would direct the second film in the series. Jackson agreed, and with the blessing and cooperation of Fanny and Nick Rodwell, and the estate of Hergé, the adventure began. Fanny, who is now the President of the Hergé Studios in Brussels, explains, "It was a special honor for us to be associated with these exceptional, creative filmmakers who had our full confidence to bring Tintin to his biggest adventures on the biggest screens. Hergé himself once said, 'I consider my stories as movies.' How prophetic!"
In close consultation with the Hergé Estate, the filmmakers enlisted screenwriters Steven Moffat and the team of Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish to craft the adaptation. To introduce audiences to the maximum breadth of Tintin and his various allies and enemies, the filmmakers decided to combine three favorite Tintin books -- The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure - into a singular plot that would keep modern moviegoers exhilarated.
The books were the screenwriters' lodestar. "Hergé's stories pull you in with vibrant colors and adventures, but they are so much more - they're filled with moral concepts, a sense of travel and exoticism, while always introducing you to the grandness of the world and to scientific ideas. I think that's one of the reasons they're so central to millions of children's imaginations - and we wanted to bring all that scope to the screenplay," sums up Cornish.
They were also guided by the conceptual approach of Spielberg and Jackson who saw elements of film noir, Hitchcockian suspense and special-effects thrillers deep inside Hergé's playful line drawings - and brought them to fore.
The result, Spielberg says is "part-mystery, part-detective story, as well as a pure unapologetic adventure, all built around a tremendous story of friendship, loyalty and belief between Captain Haddock and Tintin."
DESIGNING THE WORLD OF TINTIN: The first Steps In Moving from Page to Screen
Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson share not only fertile imaginations but also a drive to venture into frontier realms. From extra-terrestrials to Middle Earth, they have forged unforgettable characters and worlds so breathtakingly original they could never have been experienced outside a movie theatre. And yet, neither had ever applied their skills and artistry to a 3D animated motion picture.
Spielberg and Jackson's fealty was first and foremost to the Tintin legacy - and their shared passion for Hergé's transporting drawing style inspired the visual design into a fully animated CG film from day one.
Early on, while the script was still being written, the art department and animation team were set up, and collaborators on both sides of the Pacific began brainstorming ideas for the quirk-filled characters and spicy settings for Tintin. One of the first big decisions they made, one that would inform everything that followed, was to keep the period and texture of the story unmoored in time - set in a kind of eternal noir universe, with dark shadows lurking around every corner.
"These stories could take place in the '30s, the '50s, the '80s or now," notes Spielberg, "and that's part of their beauty that we wanted to preserve. What we didn't want in our movie were cell phones, television sets or modern automobiles. Our design cues came first from Hergé, and not from any presumed period or setting."
Adds Jackson: "We wanted the film to have the retro, edgy feel of a crime drama. That's not Tintin himself, but the world that Tintin lives in. There's so much suspense in the story that we felt we could incorporate people with trench coats, hats down in the rain, street lights casting shadows on the wet pavement -- that's the world we've created for our Tintin to live in."
Next, the artists, designers and animators started envisioning what Hergé's art would look like if it existed in three-dimensional space. Despite having been drawn decades ago, the artwork lent itself organically to this, says Richard Taylor, Weta Workshop's co-owner and the film's design and effects supervisor. "When you look at Herge's black pen drawings with watercolor washed in flat on the page, all you have to do is close your eyes and begin to imagine the world of Tintin. You can't help but see it in 3D," he muses.
It worked so well in part because Hergé had left behind the rules of pure reality when drawing Tintin's escapades in the first place. "The lines of what Hergé drew were not necessarily accurate," says senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri. "He wasn't trying to draft exactly what he saw - and we wanted to maintain those exaggerated qualities in the same way that he did. A big part of the design study was to look at what he did, but then to imagine it from different points of view. And that allowed us to start building up a vocabulary of how you would construct his worlds in a wholly 3D animated realm."
To bring Hergé's world alive so audiences can sense the very wind whipping through the virtual air, the art department researched imagery and locations that might represent the various environments where Tintin, Snowy and Haddock find themselves, from the boiling high seas of a stormy ocean to the shifting pink sands of the Sahara Desert. A favorite of the designers was Hergé's imaginary city of Bagghar, Morocco, a seductive realm of Far East intrigue.
"We looked at many different styles of North African structures, patterns and archways," says conceptual designer Rebekah Tisch, "and were able to use fascinating shapes and colors to create Bagghar. It left me with a real passion to go see the world - and I hope that people watching Tintin will feel that same fusion of excitement and color."
On an invitation from Fanny and Nick Rodwell of the Hergé Foundation, lead conceptual designer Chris Guise traveled to Brussels to conduct close-up research into Tintin's native locale, soaking in the atmosphere that led to the creation of his apartment at 26 Labrador Road and the silhouette of Captain Haddocks's country home at Marlinspike Hall.
"Chris immersed himself completely in Hergé's world and looked for his early inspirational images, then came back just bubbling over with a fully rounded sense of place," remarks Richard Taylor.
Digital model supervisor Marco Revelant further added to the process with his passion for model ships, which are so key to the adventure. Revelant traveled to the Musée de la Marin in Paris to visually dissect the ships on which Hergé based the Brilliant and The Unicorn. "Hergé's designs are a bit more elaborate yet reduced in size," says Revelant. "We applied those same adjustments to our digital models."
Visual effects art director Kim Sinclair looked high and low for authentic vehicles, such as the 1937 Ford seen in the books that were then scanned into the computer to be re-created digitally. "Hergé did some meticulous research into the vehicles, like the Ford and the sea plane, and we were able to know the model and year, and even find the original manufacturer's color charts," he explains.
But the most critical design element of all, from the start, was the characters themselves. From Haddock's humor-spiked poses to the sky-ward texture of Tintin's hair to the distinguishing shapes of detectives Thompson and Thomson's moustaches to the emotions crossing Snowy's snout, every nuance was debated, imagined, re-imagined and then fine-tuned during their intensive meetings.
"We looked at ever character from every angle to make sure they had the Hergé facsimile," Spielberg recounts. "We were never afraid to say, 'Well, that particular mold of Captain Haddock's face doesn't look like we're on key with the Hergé art.'"
THE INTREPID AND THE TREACHEROUS: The Cast and Characters of The Adventures of Tintin.. Read more
IMAGINARY CHARACTERS, TRUE PERFORMANCES: On The Performance Capture Stage...Read more
FROM VIRTUAL TO REALITY: Finalising The Full Film Experience in Post Production ...Read more
THE LEGACY OF HERGÉ...Read more
THE ART OF ADAPTATION
THE ART OF ANIMATION
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READ INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN SPIELBERG
STEVEN SPIELBERG (Director/Producer), one of the industry's most successful and influential filmmakers, is a principal partner of DreamWorks Studios. In 2009, he and partner Stacey Snider joined with The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group to form the new DreamWorks. This new entity is a continuation of DreamWorks Studios, which was founded in 1994 by Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.
Spielberg is also, collectively, the top-grossing director of all time, having helmed such blockbusters as Jaws, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones franchise, and Jurassic Park. Among his myriad honors, he is a three-time Academy Award winner.
Spielberg took home his first two Oscars, for Best Director and Best Picture, for the internationally lauded Schindler's List, which received a total of seven Oscars. The film was also named the Best Picture of 1993 by many of the major critics organizations, in addition to winning seven BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, both including Best Picture and Director. Spielberg also won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for his work on the film.
Spielberg won his third Academy Award, for Best Director, for the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan, which was the highest-grossing release (domestically) of 1998. It was also one of the year's most honored films, earning four additional Oscars, as well as two Golden Globe Awards, for Best Picture - Drama and Best Director, and numerous critics groups awards in the same categories. Spielberg also won another DGA Award, and shared a Producers Guild of America's (PGA) Award with the film's other producers. That same year, the PGA also presented Spielberg with the prestigious Milestone Award for his historic contribution to the motion picture industry.
He has also earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director for Munich, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Additionally, he earned DGA Award nominations for those films, as well as Jaws, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun and Amistad. With ten to date, Spielberg has been honored by his peers with more DGA Award nominations than any other director. In 2000, he received the DGA's Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hollywood Foreign Press's Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, and numerous other career tributes.
More recently, Spielberg directed the world-wide hit Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He is also a producer of this summer's success Super 8 directed by JJ Abrams. Besides directing Tintin, he is directing War Horse, based on an award-winning novel, which has also been adapted into a major stage hit in London and recently won the Tony Award for Broadway's Best Drama. From DreamWorks Studios, the film is slated to open on December 28, 2011. In October, he will begin production on Lincoln for release in the fall of 2012.
Spielberg's career began with the 1968 short film Amblin, which led to him becoming the youngest director ever signed to a long-term studio deal. He first gained attention for his 1971 telefilm Duel. Three years later, he made his feature film directorial debut on The Sugarland Express, from a screenplay he co-wrote. His next film was Jaws, which was the first film to break the $100 million mark.
In 1984, Spielberg formed his own production company, Amblin Entertainment. Under the Amblin banner, the company produced such hits as Gremlins, Goonies, Back to the Future I, II, and III, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, An American Tail, Twister, The Mask of Zorro, and the Men in Black films. Amblin also produced the Emmy-winning hit series ER with Warner Bros. Television.
In 1994, Spielberg partnered with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form the original DreamWorks Studios. The studio enjoyed both critical and commercial successes, including three consecutive Best Picture Academy Award® winners: American Beauty, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind. In its history, DreamWorks has also produced or co-produced a wide range of features, including the Transformers blockbusters; Clint Eastwood's World War II dramas Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, the latter earning a Best Picture Oscar® nomination; Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers; and The Ring, to name only a few. Under the DreamWorks banner, Spielberg also directed such films as War of the Worlds, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Spielberg has not limited his success to the big screen. On the heels of their experience on Saving Private Ryan, t he and Tom Hanks teamed to executive produce the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, based on Stephen Ambrose's book about a U.S. Army unit in Europe in World War II. Among its many awards, the project won both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Outstanding Miniseries. He and Hanks more recently reunited to executive produce the acclaimed 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, this time focusing on the Marines in WWII's Pacific theatre. The Pacific won eight Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries.
Spielberg also executive produced the Emmy-winning Sci-Fi Channel miniseries Taken, and the TNT miniseries Into the West. He was an executive producer on the Showtime series The United States of Tara, and is an executive producer on TNT's Falling Skies and the upcoming Terra Nova on Fox TV as well as an executive producer on Smash which will debut on NBC early in 2012.
Apart from his filmmaking work, Spielberg has also devoted his time and resources to many philanthropic causes. The impact of his work on Schindler's List, led him to establish the Righteous Persons Foundation using all his profits from the film. He also founded Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which, in 2005, became the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. In addition, Spielberg is the Chairman Emeritus of the Starlight Children's Foundation.
STEVEN MOFFAT (Screenplay) is one of the UK's most eminent television writers. His two-part story The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances for Series 1 of the BBC TV's revival of Dr. Who (starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper) won him much acclaim and the award for Television Moment of the Year, as well as the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form. He went on to join the series as executive producer and writer on the following season, with David Tennant as the Doctor, for BBC One. In addition to writing and co-creating the series Sherlock, for which he won a Royal Television Society Award, he garnered acclaim for his updated version of Jekyll, starring James Nesbitt, for BBC One.
As creator/writer of the cult BBC2 sitcom Coupling, Moffat wrote 28 episodes over 4 series, winning the Silver Rose of Montreux 2001 and the award for Best TV Comedy at the British Comedy Awards December 2003. Coupling is produced by Sue Vertue for Hartswood Films.
Moffat's first television work was as writer of all 43 episodes over five seasons of Press Gang, about a group of wayward high school students who are given a local newspaper to run. The series won the BAFTA and Royal Television Society Awards for Best Children's Program (and was nominated for two Writers Guild of Great Britain awards, 1 Prix Jeunesse and another BAFTA).
He then wrote two situation comedies for the BBC, Joking Apart, directed by Bob Spiers, which won the Bronze Rose of Montreux 1995, and Chalk, which caused an uproar in the teaching profession. His other television work includes Privates, also directed by Spiers, the pilot for a one-hour comedy drama, for the ITV Network; Norman at the Office, a one-off half-hour comedy starring Robert Lindsay; Overkill and Dying Live, half-hour television plays for Dawn French; and Exam Conditions, a half-hour silent film for the EBU Commission/Central Television, which won the Prix Jeunesse and Plovdiv Awards and was nominated for a RTS award.
Although he's only in his mid-thirties, award winning filmmaker, EDGAR WRIGHT's (Screenplay) list of credits reads like that of a seasoned veteran. With projects like the UK television series-turned-international cult phenomenon Spaced, the rom-zom-com feature film debut Shaun of the Dead, and its follow up action/comedy opus Hot Fuzz, he has evolved from a young film geek wanting to prove himself into one of the most sought after geeks working in film today.
Last summer, Wright released his first U.S. production of the comic book movie Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, which starred Michael Cera in the title role. He was also tapped by directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to contribute the faux trailer Don't, for the epic Grindhouse. Wright recently co-wrote The Astonishing Ant Man with his Tintin co-screenwriter Joe Cornish, for Marvel Studios.
JOE CORNISH (Screenplay) is best known as one half of British comedy duo Adam and Joe. As well as writing and directing his first film, Attack the Block, for Film Four and Big Talk Productions, Cornish recently co-wrote The Astonishing Ant Man, with Edgar Wright, for Marvel Studios. Cornish first appeared on British TV screens in 1997 as co-star and co-creator of The Adam and Joe Show, a home-made comedy show famous for its sketches, songs and animations satirizing pop culture. The show found considerable cult and critical acclaim, winning the Royal Television Society's Best Newcomers award in 1998 and running for four seasons. The success of The Adam and Joe Show led to spin-off comedy series on both Channel 4 and the BBC, including Adam & Joe's Formative Years, Adam and Joe's American Animation Adventure, and Adam and Joe Go Tokyo. Cornish also worked as director for Channel 4 comedy shows such as Modern Toss and Blunder, as a writer for BBC2's Big Train, and as a presenter for BBC2 and BBC Radio 4. Alongside his film work, Cornish maintains a successful radio career with Adam. The duo took over from Ricky Gervais on radio station XFM in 2003, spawning a popular series of podcasts. They moved to BBC 6music in 2007, where their Saturday morning show was awarded the 2008 Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Radio Programme Of The Year, three Silver Sony Awards in 2009, and Sony Gold for Best Radio Comedy in 2010.
PETER JACKSON (Producer) made history with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, becoming the first person to direct three major feature films simultaneously. The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King were nominated for and collected a slew of awards from around the globe, including 17 Academy Awards, 12 British Academy of Film and Television Awards and four Golden Globes.It was for The Return of the King that Jackson received his most impressive collection of awards. This included three Academy Awards (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture), two Golden Globes (Best Director and Best Motion Picture-Drama), three BAFTAs (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film and Audience Award), a Directors Guild Award, a Producers Guild Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award.As a follow-up to The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, in 2005 Jackson directed, wrote and produced King Kong for Universal Pictures. The film grossed over $500 million and won three Oscars. He next garnered critical plaudits for directing the mystery drama The Lovely Bones. Jackson previously received widespread acclaim for his 1994 feature Heavenly Creatures, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Other film credits include The Frighteners, starring Michael J. Fox; the adult puppet feature Meet the Feebles; and Braindead, which won 16 international science fiction awards, including the Saturn. Jackson also co-directed the television documentary Forgotten Silver, which also hit the film festival circuit. In 2009, Jackson produced the worldwide sci-fi hit District 9. He is also producer of the remake of the WWII film Dambusters.
Jackson is currently at work directing the highly anticipated two-film adaptation of Tolkien's The Hobbit, which he also co-wrote.Born in New Zealand on Halloween in 1961, Jackson began at an early age making movies with his parents' Super 8 camera. At 17, he left school and, after purchasing a 16mm camera, began shooting a science fiction comedy short, which, three years later, had grown into a 75-minute feature called Bad Taste.
Jackson works closely with partner Fran Walsh, with whom he shares his writing and producing credits, as well as a family. He has a special interest in WWI memorabilia and is the proud owner of a number of aircraft from that era.
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