The Adventures of Tintin 2

If you haven't had a chance to catch The Adventures of Tintin yet (apparently most of you haven't), there's still a bit of time to see the Oscar nominated film as it finishes out its theatrical run in the States.

Coming from the pages of Belgian artist Herge's comic book series of the same name, it's a great story adaptation that features a wonderful mix of Encyclopedia Brown-like mystery and high seas adventure. In addition to the great direction from Steven Spielberg, the film also features the unparalleled performance-capture work of Andy Serkis who donned the ping-pong ball suit as Gollum in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films and most recently as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If, for no other reason, catch it to see one of Spielberg's most fascinating opening title sequences since 2002's Catch Me if You Can. It's that cool.

Though the film has been a bit of a financial disappointment in the States with only $76 million in box office receipts to date, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn scored big in other parts of the world bringing its total haul to nearly $300 million. And apparently that's enough to warrant the continuation of the series with the second film that, according to Spielberg, will be directed by Peter Jackson.

Via TotalFilm, we find out that even though Spielberg wanted to direct the second installment in the series, Jackson will take over. Says Spielberg, "Peter [Jackson]'s doing it. I wanted to do it, but Peter has to because we made a deal. I said, 'I'll direct the first one, you direct the second one.'

Of course Jackson is currently working on The Hobbit so don't get too excited for a quick turn-around, but TinTin 2 is next in line. "And Peter, of course, is going to do it right after he finishes photography on The Hobbit. He'll go right into the 31, 21 days of performance capture," adds Spielberg.

No word yet on which of the books the follow-up will be based, and Spielberg  countered recent speculation that it will be The Calculus Affair by adding, "We're not telling the world what books we're basing the second movie on yet. We have completed a story outline now. We have a writer on it. I'm just not declaring what it is. It will be more than one book, but no more than two."

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will hit home video (DVD and blu-ray) on March 19th of this year. It stars the voices of Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg.