Tintin sequel update: Peter Jackson undecided on which book to pull from

Peter Jackson is still hoping to follow up 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin with a sequel, with him directing and Steven Spielberg producing. The project has been in development since 2008, when Sony agreed to finance two Tintin films.

Speaking with Polygon at a press event promoting Mortal Engines (another long-in-development project he is producing), Peter Jackson offered an update to the status of the second Tintin film, and whether it’s still in the works.

“I’m intending to” make it, said Jackson. “I’ve got gotta get the script written, but I’m certainly hoping to get another Tintin film, one which I’ve directed. This one, Steven [Spielberg] would produce. It’s within the next year or two, I would hope. I mean, there’s nothing happening this very second, but it does literally need me to sit down and develop a script for it. So probably in the new year, I’ll try to do that.”

Nickelodeon / Amblin

For the last several years, the understanding was that the second film would focus on Prisoners of the Sun, a Tintin story set in Peru involving ancient Incan temples and princes. But it seems Jackson is not locked into pulling from that story when he does begin working on the script.

“I’ve had certain times where I thought it was going to be this, it’s going to be that … For a while, we’ve gone to Prisoners of the Sun,” said Jackson. “But I’m not necessarily thinking that that would be where we’d go next time. There’s so many good stories, and I just want to see what I feel like making.”

He continued, saying that it’s really his call what the second film ends up focusing on.

“There’s no one that dictates what it has to be, you know — I get to choose. So I wanna just make that choice carefully because […] I love the variety, you know? You can go the Indiana Jones-sort of Prisoners of the Sun, or you can go into The Calculus Affair and be more of a Eastern Bloc thriller. […] There’s the moon ones where you can explore the moon and space. There’s so many choices, and I couldn’t tell you today […] which way I’m going.”

Sounds like Tintin fans shouldn’t be holding their breath awaiting the next installment, but Jackson’s passion for the franchise still seems clear. It’s really just a matter of when he can make time for it.