Peter Jackson Plans To Shoot MoCap Footage For 'Tintin 2' Next Year

Peter Jackson's latest film is just about to hit theaters, but with the expansion of The Hobbit adaptation into a trilogy, he'll still be a busy guy for the next couple years. While the next two films are shot (mostly — there will probably be some additional shooting at some point) loads of post-production work remains to be done on the second and third Hobbit chapters.

So where's he going to get the time to make another film?

During a press stop for The Hobbit, Jackson said he would shoot the base mocap footage for the second Tintin film sometime next year.

Bleeding Cool points to RYTBF, which reports that Belgian media asked Jackson about his chapter of the Tintin series. It's a film we've heard little about; since Spielberg's film came out a year ago, Jackson has been very busy on The Hobbit. He hasn't been pestered with questions about Tintin, and has spoken rarely about it.

But Jackson said the plan is to put actors in mocap suits on a stage next year, to shoot the basic material that WETA will then translate into animation for a 2015 release. If you'll recall, Spielberg directed the live mocap work for the first Tintin film in a relatively short amount of time. It's the post-production work that takes loads of time. So he can shoot the mocap material fairly quickly, and then let WETA get to work with the post while he finishes The Hobbit. This means we might get films from Jackson once a year for the next few years.

As for more specifics of the sequel, we know that Anthony Horowitz was hired to script, and that the film could incorporate elements of Herge's Tintin volumes Prisoners of the Sun and/or The Calculus Affair. Unless things change, it's safe to assume that Jackson's Tintin film will be rendered in HFR, too.