Up until when I read his comment I hadn’t heard of either actor. John Hurt has played a number of roles and has won numerous awards over the years. He worked with Spielberg in ”Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, but it’s been too long since I saw the movie to remember a thing about his part. This has me wanting to watch the movie again, because his part in the film is allegedly very much like Professor Calculus. Here’s a random video off Youtube I found of him in a cowboy film.

Sylvester McCoy is best known for being the 7th doctor in Doctor Who, which might have pulled more weight in his being cast for the role if we had Steven Moffat writing the script. However, he has been cast in The Hobbit as the wizard Radagast. This part of the rumor seems very plausible because he will certainly spend a lot of time with Peter Jackson, the next film’s director. Here’s an old interview with Sylvester talking about Doctor Who.

I can’t say whether these rumors are true or not, this kind of news changes all the time. Whether it’s a joke or an actual inside scoop, I at least found it interesting. I haven’t seen (or remember seeing) enough of these two actors to say who I would choose as Professor Calculus, but if I had to pick based on the voice I heard in those two videos I would have to go with Sylvester. But of course these actors are very versatile and I have no idea how they’d really sound as Calculus should they try out.

Ironically, I think I would have picked John Hurt for Radagast the wizard.

Thank’s for the rumor, Mike! Keep us posted…

UPDATE: apparently the rumor started from this video on Empire’s site, an interview with ”Tintin 1” ‘s writers on who they mentally picture as Calculus: http://www.empireonline.com/features/tintin-2-five-things-to-expect/p2

Ivan Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig): A ruthless criminal with a mysterious past and an evil plan that puts the life of Captain Haddock at stake. He is determined to get Tintin’s model of the Unicorn-at any cost…

This confirms it. A long time ago I asked somewhere if we had any real proof for the rumor that ”Rackham” was the main villain. We didn’t really have anything official. I think it came about because people knew Daniel Craig had a major part and could not only show up in a flash back if he was to run into Tintin in the film. So they proposed that he was Rackham’s descendant. It seems they were right about that too, since that has to be the ”mysterious past” they refer to. But we had assumed that if he was Rackham’s descendant, he would still have Rackham as a last name.

Somehow they are going to try to convince us that Rackham had a kid who was the great great great…great grandfather of a guy named Sakharine Ivan Ivanovitch. Also I’m not sure how they’ll pull off such a russian sounding name while the villain has a british accent. But few people watching the film will notice such things, and they aren’t really big deals anyway. Of course they can be explained, we just aren’t sure how. I’ll leave it as a mystery to be revealed when the movie comes out, because I’m not about to make another erroneous guess about this villain…

In the albums Sakharine is just a harmless ship collector that adds a bit of intrigue to the story when Tintin finds out somebody else has a ship exactly like his. Tintin does accuse him of having stolen his ship, one of the only times in the albums Tintin is wrong about a villain. In the movie adaptation the writers have turned Sakharine into a combination of the craftiness of the Bird brothers and the fun idea of people being or pretending to be descendants of Red Rackham. He even looks the part: he looks sly, and yet sophisticated. And he even looks a lot like Red Rackham, if you look closely in the albums.

He is a venerable villain for sure. Maybe even more so then the Bird Brothers were. I’m looking forward to see what such a character will add to the story. I’m not at all upset that they changed that part of the story.

The page also revealed a bit of info about Castafiore’s appearance. We really had no idea when she would show up.

Bianca Castafiore (Kim Stengel): Diva of opera, sometimes referred to as the “Milanese Nightingale,” that during a private performance at the Palace of Omar Ben Salaad inadvertently becomes the main weapon of Sakharine.

This should be interesting. Will she be kidnapped? That would be very much like ”Tintin and the Picaros”. I’ll admit she never was my favorite character, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with her in the movie.

Thanks Britto for pointing out the stuff I had missed on the site.

The game has three modes, including the co-operative, story and challenge mode, and they divide play into exploration, combat and solving puzzle phases. In the co-operative mode, live players can drop in an out of the game dynamically and play any of six characters, including Tintin, Captain Haddock, Thompson and Thompson (who act as one character), Professor Cuthbert Calculus, Bianca Castafiore and even Snowy. Each character has unique skills like Tintin who can shoot a grappling hook or opera diva Castafiore who can dispatch enemies with her windy contralto.

This is either fake or true. It could easily be fake if they simply took the list of popular Tintin characters and assumed that they would be in the game. But that seems unlikely because they give details about Castafiore’s and the Thompson’s that they would only know if they either saw it or were told. So it seems there is confirmation Calculus will at least show up in the video game this year.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Calculus will be in the movie. I’m being forced to be patient with people online who still make comments such as ”I was hoping Tintin would be in live action when I watched the trailer” and ”Where is Calculus?” years and months after us fans have answered and given good theories on these questions. For those of you who don’t know, Calculus has not been cast as far as we know. His main role in the story was to invent a shark submarine to let Tintin explore the sunken Unicorn. But it looks like the story may not focus on the finding of the Unicorn itself but of the treasure that was actually at Marlinspike or wherever they chose to put it in the movie the whole time. Almost all of ”Red Rackham’s treasure” is fun to read but would make for a kind of boring movie. After all there are no villains and they never find anything but an idol, the ship and some rum. It makes total sense to cut to the chase and leave that part out of the movie, bringing Calculus in to the sequel as possibly one of the explorers from Peru.

To what degree is it OK to expect the Bird Brothers to be in the movie because they are in the game and not believe Calculus will be? Now I’m not sure what to think. Maybe both are in the film, maybe they were just added to the ”expanded” Tintin video game for the fans sake’s. I’ll wait for the movie to come out before i make too many conclusions.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/06/09/tintin-breaks-out-into-3-d-at-e3/?mod=google_news_blog

Kung Fu Panda 2 hits theaters this month, May 26th. So if the source is correct, we could have very little time to wait. With the recent advertisement in France and the film festival going on, it wouldn’t surprise me to find some kind of a trailer out very soon.

Thanks Paul for finding this info! I can hardly wait to see something in motion soon!

Just a word of caution to all you fellow Tintin fans who are dying to see a trailer…as important as it is, it is still only a trailer. It will only reveal a certain amount of content from the film and being a teaser trailer, we shouldn’t expect much. We are hence bound to take every last detail revealed and analyze it over and over until the next time stuff is revealed. I’ll admit that is all really great fun and all that. Go ahead! But let’s do our best to remember that there are and will be differences between the film and the albums. If we must over analyze (and we’re all dying to,right?) let’s not do it to subconsciously pick on the material and bring out every flaw from Tintin’s hair to Snowy’s paw. Be positive and enjoy the long awaited trailer!

source:http://twitter.com/#!/TheFilmStage/status/68183762336362496

They seem to be releasing one a day. every few hours. The first five six are up and there are space for seven more. So we can expect the first full images on the 8th of November or there about Monday.

The best guess for what the images show:

• ???
• Snowy’s Fur
• ???
• Tintin’s Jumper
• A Sock

What Does This Tell Us

Not a lot except that the movie will use incredibly real looking textures. Which suggests there will be nothing cartoony about this animation. I expect to see a world that has Herge’s distinctive style but with an amazing level of detail.

It looks like the long wait for the first images will be worth it.

EDIT…

Sharp eyed Proman has spotted that they are going up faster than one a day and that new objects are added to the background images. See comments for more details.

See: Tintin The Videogame: PS3 / Wii Bound Only? and RUMOR – Tintin game may be hitting Wii, PS3 exclusive.

Andy Serkis on Tintin and The Hobbit

Tintin book targetted over native stereotypes by a school board in Peterborough (America). Whilst I admire their aim to counter stereotypical images of native americans, they seem to miss the point. Tintin in America is racist as were a lot of his early books but Herge was a product of his time and most importantly recognised he was wrong. In later books he went out of his way to show a more sympathetic view of native cultures. Books like Tintin in America should be available to children along with adults who are able to explain the books context.

Simon Pegg once more denies a link to the Tintin movies: Simon Pegg denies Tintin rumours.

After several weeks of uncertainty it seems the Spielberg and Jackson have found financing from a joint venture between Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures. Paramount will be handling the films in the English speaking world whilst Sony deals with what some American web sites refer to as the “foreign” distribution. Given that Tintin is a Belgium comic, written in French and translated into 30+ languages, I think Sony gets the better part of the deal.

Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd

The Sony/ Paramount deal has raised some questions. Initial reports from the New York Time suggested that the deal only included two films, not the planned trilogy. There has been no official announcement and the reporter behind the NYT story has a reputation of inaccuracy according to some movie blogs. A two film deal makes sense as the idea that the third film would be jointly directed by Jackson and Spielberg always seemed odd.

However most informed coverage of this story insists it will be three films and three films makes sense. A lot of the cost of these films is in the license and the set up for the special effects. Spreading these costs across three films makes financial sense.

Will The Real Tintin Please Stand Up

Though never officially announced as Tintin, Thomas Sangster appears to have pulled out of the project. It seems that the films new shooting schedule falling back to 2009 / 2010, means that Thomas can no longer fit it in.

More positively, Dreamworks has a distribution deal with Universal in place and Paramount are still keen to fund the films if Spielberg and Jackson cut there fees.

Source: Films up in the air after studios split, DreamWorks/Universal Union Disruptive?