Peter Jackson has confirmed that his next narrative feature film will be the long-delayed sequel to The Adventures of Tintin, and that the script is now finished. He shared the update during an interview with Gold Derby marking the 30th anniversary of his 1996 film The Frighteners, according to GoldDerby.
What Jackson actually said
Jackson explained the project traces back to a promise he made 15 years ago. “Fran and I have been working on the script for the next Tintin film,” Jackson said, referring to his longtime creative partner Fran Walsh. He noted that it has been 15 years since Steven Spielberg directed the first Tintin movie, which he produced. Fran Walsh. He confirmed the script is done, adding: “So probably the next film that I’d actually direct is a Tintin movie.”
The pact behind the sequel
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn opened in 2011, directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Jackson. The plan from the start was for the two to swap roles on a follow-up, with Jackson directing and Spielberg producing. That film earned $374 million worldwide on a $135 million budget and drew from three of Hergé’s original books — The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham’s Treasure — with a screenplay credited to Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish, according to Dark Horizons. Jackson himself acknowledged the long wait: “It’s just taken 15 years to get there, unfortunately, a bit late. But it’s a timeless story.”
Why it took Jackson this long to come back
This will be Jackson’s first narrative feature since 2014’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. In the years since, he’s worked exclusively in documentary filmmaking, directing the WWI project They Shall Not Grow Old and The Beatles: Get Back, including its companion film The Rooftop Concert. Jackson addressed the gap earlier this year, pointing to the death of his longtime cinematographer, Andrew Lesnie, as a turning point. “I think his death changed my creative path,” Jackson said, according to JoBlo, explaining that returning to narrative film would mean building a working relationship with an entirely new director of photography — something he’d been putting off for over a decade.
From a Cannes hotel room to a finished script
This isn’t the first update Jackson has given on the project this year. Back in May, while at the Cannes Film Festival receiving an honorary Palme d’Or, Jackson revealed he was actively writing the Tintin script from his hotel room between festival events, according to Empire. Two months later, the script is complete.
Which Tintin story it might tell
Jackson hasn’t confirmed which Hergé book, or books, the sequel will adapt. It had previously carried the working subtitle Prisoners of the Sun, referencing the character’s 14th adventure involving a hidden Incan civilization, though that title is over a decade old and may no longer apply, according to World of Reel. Jackson has separately named The Seven Crystal Balls, Prisoners of the Sun, The Black Island, and The Calculus Affair among his favorite entries in the source material, per CBR, without stating outright which one the new film draws from.
Cast, timeline, and what’s still missing
No cast has been formally announced, though there’s a general expectation that Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis will reprise their motion-capture roles from the first film. Just as important: there’s still no release date, no confirmed start of production, and no studio announcement making the project official, according to MovieWeb. Because the film uses the same performance-capture animation process as the original, full production — capture, animation, and post — would likely take years even after filming begins, meaning a finished script is a milestone, not a green light.
What Jackson is doing in the meantime
Tintin isn’t the only franchise pulling at Jackson’s attention right now. He’s currently producing The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Andy Serkis, which began filming in New Zealand on June 29 and is scheduled for release in December 2027. Jackson’s longtime collaborator Richard Taylor, who joined the same Gold Derby conversation, briefly stepped away mid-interview to handle a production matter related to the film, joking that “the machine never stops.”
