The Tintin Sequels: Speculation - Characters and Actors

Introduction
Since the secrecy surrounding the sequel to The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn seems to be absolute, and clues given by screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, director Peter Jackson and producer Steven Spielberg are, at best, misleading, why not have some fun and speculate a little?
What I plan to do here is compile a list of characters I'd like to see in the Tintin sequels.
This will not just be a list, as that would not be very interesting; I will also do a brief presentation of each character, consider the probability of their appearance in the sequels, and ponder which actor could portray them. Warning: as this is my dream-casting, expect to see big name actors, even for the smallest parts.
Let's go!

UPDATED - Peter Jackson on Tintin 2!

The Hobbit director dressed as Captain Haddock.

Friend of the blog and our resident Tintin expert, Damien, shared an interesting interview today, an interview with Tintin 2 director, Peter Jackson. The director, who produced the first Tintin film, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, and who is currently directing the Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit, spoke to Salon about not being a superhero fan and his tastes in comic books. This, inevitably, led to talking about Hergé's Tintin and the film's based on it.

Steven Spielberg directed the first film, and is set to produce the sequel - written by Stormbreaker author, Anthony Horowitz. Of the sequel, Jackson told Salon that it will be:

“slightly less of a rollicking adventure and something a bit more, a little bit more of a sort of espionage type of story. So it’s a slight tone shift, which I think will be good.”

Well, that narrows the list of possibilities a bit. The obvious choice, in terms of espionage type stories - that introduces Professor Calculus - would be The Calculus Affair, but Anthony Horowitz told us on Twitter last month that we shouldn't "put too much money on that". Of course, it's entirely possible that Horowitz was just trying to throw us off the scent - as there's not that many other stories that fit the espionage mould. The Black Island (one of Peter Jackson's favourite Tintin adventures) or King Ottokar's Sceptre are also possibilities, but references to those adventures appeared as newspaper clippings on Tintin's wall in the first film, so who knows.

Basically, we're no closer to knowing than we were before - if anything we're further away - but it sure gets you excited for the film!

We also now have a better idea of when we can expect to see Tintin 2, as Jackson also stated in the interview that he hopes to spend five or six weeks in 2013 doing the mo-cap for the film - when he's winding the second part of The Hobbit. That would seem, factoring in animation time, to place a Tintin 2 release in late 2015 or early/mid 2016.

It seems such a long way off...

Be sure to check out the full interview for more, including talk about possibly bringing in another director for Tintin 3.

UPDATED

Anthony Horowitz just told us on Twitter that "The clippings are irrelevant." So, this opens the field up. Given that The Calculus Affair was said to be ruled out (although, it could still be a bluff), and that we now know that the stories on the wall in the first film are still possibilities, The Black Island is looking very likely!

A great story that is sufficiently far removed from the globe-trotting Indiana Jones-esque nature of the first film, to shake things up a bit tonally, should make a brilliant film. And we know Jackson likes animated gorillas after his King Kong remake!

Keep visiting A113Animation for more Tintin 2 news as it happens!

Tintin 2: "You can expect to meet Cuthbert Calculus."

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, Steven Spielberg's long gestating big screen version of Hergé's famed boy journalist stories, arrived in cinemas last year, and its success (my review here) is evident by the great news we've heard thus far from its upcoming sequel.

The original film, penned by the talented trio of Edgar Wright, Steven Moffat and Joe Cornish, was based on three Tintin books: The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure, but Tintin 2 is taking a slightly different direction. This time around the film, directed now by Peter Jackson, will be written by Stormbreaker author, Anthony Horowitz, and he today shed some light on what we can expect from the second Tintin film.

It was long rumoured that the second film would be based on the Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun stories, but this has since been denied (shame), and no other suggestions have been really confirmed. However, today, Horowitz told this blog on Twitter, that in Tintin 2 we "can expect to meet Cuthbert Calculus". The first film introduced us to Tintin (Jamie Bell), Snowy and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), so Professor Calculus, the hard-of-hearing genius, is the last main big character we've still be introduced to.


So, given that we can now rule out Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun, and given that it's also very unlikely to pick up immediately where Secret of the Unicorn left off (effectively ruling out a continuation of Red Rackham's Treasure), the last obvious choice is The Calculus Affair. The Calculus Affair, one of the later Tintin stories, sees Tintin, Haddock and Snowy travelling across the globe to rescue an abducted Professor Cuthbert Calculus; with some fiddling with the story and continuity, this could act as a very effective introduction for the beloved character.

We've heard rumours of this in the past, but it's nice to have some more solid confirmation.

Oh, and yes, I am now a huge Tintin fan.