Corona | Coming Attractions

Variety has an interesting story about a quiet fact happening this week in Hollywood: Steven Spielberg is wrapping up principal photography on Tintin. The Beard has been on the motion capture set of Tintin for 32 days calling the shots, but now that dealing with the live actors is coming to a close, it's being heard that Peter Jackson will be taking over the heavy lifting and calling the shots on Tintin during its 18-month post-production process.

Having two directors splitting up the workload on any film would be called unusual but as Variety rightly notes, this is Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. Jaws. Saving Private Ryan. The Lord of the Rings. While Variety doesn't make note of Spielberg's Lincoln biopic, rumor has it that he's wanting to move that film into production this summer and that would definitely reduce the amount of hours he could put into working on Tintin.

It had been generally believed that Spielberg would direct the first Tintin movie and Jackson the second; now it looks like Paramount and Sony aren't going to spend the money on Tintin 2 until they get a better handle on how Tintin 1 is going to play to the market. Outside of Europe Tintin isn't well-known and it's going to be an uphill battle to market the film to North American audiences. The long and short is this: even with the backing of Hollywood's biggest director and one that's definately in the top 5, no one is willing to risk another $120 million dollars on a Tintin sequel.

And the insiders working on Tintin can't even talk about how the movie is going to wow us when we get to see footage from it. "It's extremely difficult to explain to someone unless they are standing here next to me," Spielberg's longtime producing partner Kathleen Kennedy said to Variety. "And usually then their reaction is, 'Oh my god.' " Is she playing it safe, genuinely telling us the truth or are there some issues with the cartoony look that Jackson is crafting with his digital wizards at WETA? That's the problem when all we're left with is a scant amount of hard details and no guarantee that we'll see anything to shape our expectations for the final product for at least a year.