TinTin Full Length Trailer

What do you get if you take the directing skills of 'Jaws', 'Jurassic Park', and 'Saving Private Ryan', mix it with the producers of 'Lord of the Rings' and 'King Kong' and then combine it with the writers behind 'Sherlock', 'Attack the Block' and 'Hot Fuzz' and 'Shaun of the Dead' ?????

Well the answer is The Adventures of "TinTin: The Secret of the Unicorn", a new performance capture film from Director Steven Spielberg and Producer Peter Jackson. The film stars Jamie Bell as Herge's famous explorer with Andy Serkis as 'Captain Haddock' and Simon Pegg & Nick Frost as 'Thomson & Thompson'.

The movie combines the three stories 'The Crab With The Golden Claws', 'The Secret Of The Unicorn' and 'Red Rackham's Treasure' and will focus on TinTin's first encounter with Captain Haddock and the discovery of instructions as to the whereabouts of a sunken ship and, of course, lots of treasure.

Filming took place in just over 30 days, starting at the end of January 2009 which sounds quick but that is the beauty of performance capture, its nice and speedy due to not having to set up lights etc. Its only afterwards the hard work really starts in post production. Weta Digital (Avatar) will be providing the mammoth amount of CGI required whilst king of the movie themes, John Williams will be providing the score. 

The film will be the first in a trilogy of films with the second being directed by Peter Jackson and the third being co-directed by both Steven and Peter. It's scheduled for release in Decmber 2011 and I think this will be the start of a great trilogy !

We featured the teaser trailer a few weeks ago but here now for your pleasure is the full length international trailer.

Sherlock to become a Dragon !

It was revealed yesterday that Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch will be joining the cast of "The Hobbit" to play Smaug the Dragon via motion capture and also to voice the Necromancer.

Benedict's "Sherlock" co-star Martin Freeman, who himself is playing Bilbo Baggins, revealed that Benedict was joining the cast at the Bafta's last month so it's good to confirm the roles he is playing.

This is of course not the first time an actor has played two roles in a Middle Earth film. John Rhys Davies played both Gimli and voiced Treebeard in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Strangely enough, in a rather odd coincidence John recently voiced the role of Dr Watson in "Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes" ????

It's no surprise really that Benedict has been cast in Peter Jackson's two part epic tale. In the incestuous world of film making its always been a case of six degrees of separation...........or more a case of six degrees of Kevin Bacon.......

Basically.....Peter Jackson is producing and directing the two Hobbit films. He is also producing the Tin Tin films which star Andy Serkis (Gollum) as Captain Haddock. They are being co-written by Steven Moffat and he writes Sherlock, which stars Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch. Its a case of scratch my back and I will scratch yours I guess. In fact , don't be surprised if you see some Hobbit cameos in the second series of Sherlock.