I'm still not sold on this performance-capture stuff (Beowulf looks terrible), but leave it to Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and a little adventuring character named Tintin to change my mind ... hopefully. Dreamworks and producer Kathleen Kennedy (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial) are busy working on their 3-D animated trilogy based on Georges "Herge" Remi's iconic Belgian reporter character, and I'm really hoping they get it right. Although they haven't yet found a third filmmaker to helm the installment not being directed by Spielberg or Jackson, they have hired a screenwriter. According to The Hollywood Reporter, British television vet Steven Moffat will script all three parts. The guy has written for series' as diverse as Coupling, Doctor Who and this past summer's Jekyll. Is he ready to tackle such a big-deal project?

Personally, I'm not worried about the scripts for the Tintin movies. Herge was such a great storyteller that I can't imagine it would be difficult to adapt his work. What I'm more worried about is how the film will look. From what we've heard so far, they're attempting something that looks realistic (or live-action) while still retaining the look of Herge's drawings (which are cartoons). Sure, I want to be able to trust Spielberg and Jackson (as Scott mentioned awhile back: if you can't trust them, who can you trust?), but then I haven't seen any performance-capture work that I've been satisfied with -- at least not anything that encompassed an entire film and all of its characters. Will it be more like Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf, which looks too much like a video game, or will it be more like Jackson's work with Andy Serkis in both his Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong? Or will it be something totally new, unlike anything we've ever seen? All I have to say is that I hope Zemeckis isn't the third director hired.

I have to admit right away that I'm not too familiar with the Tintin comic books, but I just recently watched Anders Østergaard's brilliant documentary Tintin and I, which is about Tintin creator Hergé, and I've been meaning ever since to pick up one of the titles. Now, I can either hurry up and read a copy of The Adventures of Tintin or I can be lazy and wait for the upcoming movie produced by Steven Spielberg, which DreamWorks has just greenlit. Spielberg has been interested in adapting one of Tintin's adventures for many decades, but he only recently reacquired the rights to the character. According to Spielberg.net, the movie might be done with James Cameron's new performance capture technology.

For those unfamiliar with the Belgian comics, Tintin is a reporter who travels to different parts of the world with his dog Snowy and occasionally with other characters such as a sea captain called Haddock. Hergé's drawings were detailed and extremely well researched to provide readers with as much authenticity as possible while also delivering smartly-written and highly entertaining adventures. It isn't known, even by the studio probably, which of Tintin's stories will be brought to screen first, though DreamWorks is hoping for enough success with the film to turn it into a franchise.