Adventures Into Digital Comics

The Adventures of Tintin (released as The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in some territories) is a 2011 animated adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, who produced it with Peter Jackson and Kathleen Kennedy, and written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. Based on the Tintin comic book series by Hergé, the film stars Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis and Daniel Craig. In the film, Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock search for the treasure of the Unicorn, a ship once captained by Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis Haddock, but face dangerous pursuit by Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine, the descendant of Sir Francis' nemesis Red Rackham. Spielberg and Hergé admired each other's work; Spielberg acquired the film rights to The Adventures of Tintin after Hergé's death in 1983, and re-optioned them in 2002. Filming was due to begin in October 2008 for a 2010 release, but the release was delayed to 2011 after Universal Pictures backed out of producing the film with Paramount Pictures, which had provided $30 million in pre-production; Columbia Pictures replaced Universal as co-financer. The delay resulted in Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who was originally cast as Tintin, departing and being replaced by Bell. The film draws inspiration from the Tintin volumes The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure. Principal photography began in January 2009 and finished that July, with a combination of voice acting, motion capture and traditional computer animation being used. The Adventures of Tintin premiered at the UGC De Brouckère in Brussels on 22 October 2011, and was released in New Zealand on 26 October and in the United States on 21 December by Paramount. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the motion-capture animation, faithful character designs, visual effects, action sequences, cast performances and musical score, and grossed $374 million against a $135 million budget, and received numerous awards and nominations, including being the first motion-captured animated film to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, while John Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. A sequel directed by Jackson has been announced but has since stalled in development hell. In 2026, Jackson said that he and Fran Walsh were working on the script.