It’s been a long old road getting a Tintin movie up and running with Steven Spielberg having spent the best part of thirty years sniffing around the character.
Although not a childhood fan as some have claimed, the great man’s interest was apparently piqued by a comparison made in the wake of Raiders of The Lost Ark.

“In 1981, when Raiders came out, I was reading a review in a magazine,” Spielberg told the Daily Inquirer. “The review compared the story of Raiders to Tintin. I’d never heard of Tintin. I asked my assistant to go find out what this is all about. My assistant came back with five Tintin books and they were all in French. But I didn’t need to read the captions. I could understand the entire story by looking at the pictures. I thought the artwork of Hergé was brilliant.”

Seeing the potential in a character boasting reams of pre-written stories, Spielberg arranged to meet with the Belgian cartoonist to discuss a possible movie adaptation. Sadly for him, Hergé passed away before the head-to-head could take place, but his widow clearly liked the cut of Steve’s jib, and in 1983 a deal was struck allowing Spielberg the rights to the boy journalist and his adventures.

However, the project remained on the shelf for years, with Spielberg reportedly dubious as to how well he could do the project justice with the technology available at the time. Hergé himself was apparently none-too enamoured with either the live-action or animated adaptations of the ‘60s, leaving Spielberg scratching his head as to how he could get the character up on screen without trampling over the old boy’s legacy…