The holiday movie is a 3-D motion-capture feature inspired by the renowned character created by Herge – the pen name of Belgian writer and artist Georges Prosper Remi – in two dozen stories first published 80 years ago.
Jamie Bell stars as the globetrotting young reporter Tintin, who faces off against the nefarious Red Rackham, played by Daniel Craig. Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook co-star.
Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish wrote the screenplay.
Unicorn is intended as the first in a series of films derived from the Herge books. Spielberg, Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson and Kathleen Kennedy are producing the film, and Jackson’s Weta Digital has developed the performance-capture technology that Jackson himself will use when he directs the second film in the franchise. Spielberg started testing footage for the project last year and began filming officially in January.
Verhoeven to direct thriller Surrogate
Paul Verhoeven is coming back to America. The Dutch filmmaker, whose most recent directing project was 2006’s Black Book, will develop and direct The Surrogate, a thriller for 20th Century Fox.
Based on the 2004 book by Kathryn Mackel, the story centres on a couple desperate to have a child who discover that the surrogate they’ve hired to carry their baby is insane. Roderick Taylor and Bruce Taylor wrote the original draft.
After establishing a career in the Netherlands and on the international art-house circuit, Verhoeven became one of Hollywood’s most sought-after directors in the 1990s with such movies as Total Recall and Basic Instinct. He became disenchanted with Tinseltown after his 2000 sci-fi thriller Hollow Man fizzled. He then returned to the Netherlands, where he made “Black Book.” The World War II drama won several awards and thrust him back in the limelight.