31/03/2008

Seventeen-year-old Thomas Sangster, best known for his winsome turn as Liam Neeson’s son in Love Actually [+see also:
trailer
film profile], has been chosen by Steven Spielberg to play iconic boy reporter Tintin. British actor Andy Serkis, who made a mark as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films, will play Captain Haddock.

Sangster said, “Tintin is like a super boy scout. He knows how to fly these things. He knows how to drive these things. It’s just like common sense: he jumps in and goes, he doesn’t need to think about any safety; he just goes where he pleases. For such a small kid he’s very good at beating people up and, being a cartoon, nowadays you know, there's all that ‘we can't be violent’.”

Of the three planned Tintin films, Spielberg will direct one, Peter Jackson another while the third director is not yet known. Tintin, created by Belgian author Hergé, is extremely popular around the world, having sold over 200 million books worldwide. All the stories have been animated for television and film.

There have also been two French live action features – Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece (1961) and Tintin and the Blue Oranges (1964) – both starring Jean-Pierre Talbot.

Spielberg said, “We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live action film and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live action format would simply not honour the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created. The idea is that the films will look neither like cartoons nor like computer-generated animation. We’re making them look photo-realistic, the fibres of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people - but real Hergé people.”

Shooting begins in September.