Hollywood moviemaker Steven Spielberg is to bring cartoon hero Tintin and pals Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus to life in a live action feature film, industry sources said Friday.
The maker of E.T: The Extra Terrestrial, Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark will re-enact the adventures the intrepid young reporter for Universal Pictures and his own production firm, DreamWorks Pictures.
"The project will definitely go ahead, we are just waiting for a deal on the rights to Tintin to be finalised," an industry source told AFP.
Spielberg and producing partner Kathleen Kennedy are negotiating for the rights to the character, created by Belgian cartoonist Herge in 1929, with the firm that holds them, Moulinsart.
The internationally-read comic strip Tintin has developed something of a cult following over the years, keeping sales of the books featuring the youth reporter and his partners in adventure strong.[BR clear=all]
Drunken Captain Haddock - who utters strings of exclamatory curses like "billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles - Professor Cuthbert Calculus, the investigator twins Thomson and Thompson and Tintin's faithful little dog Snowy are all expected to feature in the film.
Tintin, whose author's real name was Georges Remi, was first published in a weekly supplement of the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle and has been translated into more than 50 languages.
Several animated films of the cowlick-sporting reporter have already been made, but Hollywood has yet to try a live action film version.
