Spielberg, Jackson bring Tintin to US

By David Germain

AP Movie Writer

SAN DIEGO

Steven Spielberg hopes he’s the typical American when it comes to Tintin: the filmmaker had never heard of the guy, but once he got acquainted, they became friends for life.

Peter Jackson knows he’s the typical non-American when it comes to Tintin: he’s known him since before he could read, and the character’s globe-trotting adventures are part of his own storytelling DNA.

Together, the two Academy Award-winning filmmakers hope to achieve something that eluded Belgian artist and writer Herge with his Tintin books: a place for his hero in North America.

“The Adventures of Tintin,” directed by Spielberg and produced by Jackson, already is a global blockbuster, approaching $250 million at the worldwide box office as it heads into U.S. theaters Dec. 21, two months after it began rolling out to theaters overseas.

It’s a reverse of egocentric Hollywood’s old pattern, where a film such as Spielberg’s “Jaws” would run its course domestically and trickle out to the rest of the world months later. Today, most big franchise flicks open nearly everywhere around the same time, but “Tintin” was that rare one that needed the goodwill of huge foreign audiences to sell U.S. crowds on a hero about whom, like Spielberg, most of them had never heard.

“This is an international title,” Spielberg said in an interview alongside Jackson at last summer’s Comic-Con fan convention, where they showed off footage of “The Adventures of Tintin.”

“It was written and embraced by children of all ages in 55 languages, all over the world except in North America, and that is what motivated us to debut and give a full two months of ‘Tintin’ to the world that created and embraced him.”

So who’s Tintin? He’s an intrepid young reporter with an odd tuft of ginger hair who barrels and burrows into a story until he becomes the story, traveling the world in pursuit of crooks, treasure, mysteries and a grand good time.