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International Box Office: Tintin has strong opening

Alex — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:00:10 +0000

The Adventures of Tintin started to roll into theaters around the world last weekend to great success, bringing the international box office back to life after weeks of lackluster numbers. But, it wasn’t just Tintin making the rounds, Bollywood superhero flick RA One also opened to monstrous numbers.

With Steven Spielberg directing and Peter Jackson producing, expectations for The Adventures of Tintin were rather high and with $56.1 million from 19 markets, I’m pleased to announce that it certain meet them. Now there is still a long way to go for the Herge character that appeared to the world for the first time almost 83 years ago, but this is definitely a great start. Based on this opening I’d say Tintin is headed for at least $350 million internationally. I can’t stress enough that this is just a very conservative prediction. Since The Adventures of Tintin is aimed clearly at the international market, by the time it opens in North America on December 21st, we’ll probably know if Paramount thinks it’s successful enough to green light the sequel that Peter Jackson wants to direct.

Second place is kind of a surprise for me with RA One at a staggering $33.4 million. You don’t see Bollywood film open that high every day. Obviously most of that money was made in India ($28.3 million) where it now holds the opening weekend record. All I’ve seen of this is a trailer that shows a very effects driven Bollywood flick, so if there are any people that saw this, please tell us in the comments why do you think RA One is so big and if it deserves such success.

Puss in Boots was 3rd with $17.2 million, mostly from a huge $15.1 million opening in Russia. The Shrek movies have always found great success around the world with the last one, Shrek Forever After, grossing $513.8 million internationally. Puss in Boots should at least aim for $300 million and if that happens, we might just see another adventure featuring the feline hero.

Former leader Paranormal Activity 3 fell to 4th place with $16.6 million for $54.1 million internationally and a grand total of $138.8 million worldwide. This movie cost $5 million to make, just saying.

In Time opened last weekend to somewhat better results than in North America, specifically $15.4 million. A decent start and I can see this finishing close to $80 million worldwide.

Real Steel made $12.2 million for $108 million internationally and $182.7 million worldwide. Good numbers if only Real Steel wasn’t so expensive. On the other hand Johnny English Reborn was a lot cheaper and made $12.1 million last weekend for $123.8 million internationally and $130.7 million worldwide (since it only made $6.8 million in North America).

Finally Rise of the Planet of the Apes was 8th with $10.4 million thanks to a huge $9 million opening in China. Rise of the Planet of the Apes now sits at $453.2 million worldwide, a good deal higher than the 2001 Planet of the Apes ($362.2 million).

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Paramount release new trailer for The Adventures of Tintin

Liam — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:38:50 +0000

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting the UK and Europe on October 26th, and positive reviews are popping up everywhere.

Paramount Pictures is still gearing up for a December release in the US though, and they’ve released a new full length trailer which is probably the best one yet. If you haven’t been sold by the previous trailers for Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s collaboration, you will be now.

Watch below:

The Adventures of Tintin reviews pour in

Liam — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:30:46 +0000

In 10 days Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting screens throughout Europe, and the first set of reviews have started to appear online.

The Good

Empire – 4 stars:

The pace throughout is rat-a-tat-tat quick, the plot tripping along, and the exposition breathless. You have a job keeping up, but never at the expense of the sheer goodwill. While luxuriating in its pre-existing universe, here is a film imploring you to join in. It would take a hard heart to resist.
Action-packed, gorgeous, and faithfully whimsical: Hergé thought Spielberg the only director capable of filming Tintin. He was onto something.

Entertainment Focus – 4 stars:

The fact that The Adventures of Tintin is so watchable is a major shock to me. As someone completely indifferent to the books and not that excited about this project in general, it completely blindsided me. Full of action, excitement, amazing visuals and hilarious set-pieces, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is a major success and one that I heartily recommend.

Digital Spy – 4 stars:

This performance capture is far from the glassy-eyed uncanny valley that’s plagued Robert Zemeckis. Through Spielberg’s digital lens there’s charm, warmth and, most importantly, the illusion of life with these characters.
With its dizzying spectacle and fast-paced action, The Adventures of Tintin is top notch entertainment and miles ahead of its performance capture predecessors in its wit and visual sophistication.

The Average

The Telegraph – 3 stars:

The film is also hobbled by its reliance on performance capture simply because the graphics are not good enough. Weta Digital might be able to render the thousand or so hairs in Tintin’s quiff with ease, but watch their PCs’ gears crunch when they try to digitise a personality.
This has quite a few of the hallmarks of a decent family movie, but as a fan of both the Tintin adventures and Spielberg’s cinematic swashbuckling since childhood, it left me underwhelmed.

Total Film – 3 stars:

Like the 3D, an adventure that’s serviceable but doesn’t reach out and grab you as often as you’d expect. Frenetic to a fault, it’ll divert the under-10s; older viewers may feel there’s not enough lift in the quiff.

The Bad:

None yet!

I’ll update with more reviews when they appear.

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New UK trailer for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Liam — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:47:04 +0000

Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting UK screens later this month, and a new UK trailer has been released online in preparation.

As the movie is pretty much complete now the action scenes are prominent in the trailer, with most of the new footage involving a motorcycle and a sidecar. We also see shots of ships on fire, and some amazing scenery from Tintin’s travels.

Watch below:

In the film, co-written by Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) and Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), Jamie Bell stars as journalist and adventurer Tintin with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing detective twins Thompson and Thomson and Daniel Craig playing villainous pirate Red Rackham. Paramount will release The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in the US in December, with Sony releasing the film in Europe and overseas over the next few months.

New trailer for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Liam — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:03:49 +0000

A new trailer for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn has found its way online. It’s not the best quality so it’s hard to get a good look at the faces (the teaser did a good job of hiding them), but the new footage gives us a run-through of the story and we get to see a few new action scenes.

Watch below: (I’ll update with a HD version when it becomes available)

New image from The Adventures of Tintin

Liam — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:17:44 +0000

Dutch website Animatie got their hands on a new image from Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The image (seen above) features Tintin and his canine companion Snowy carrying out some research.

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The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn teaser trailer

Liam — Tue, 17 May 2011 09:43:26 +0000

As expected, Paramount today released the first official trailer for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The teaser only lasts a minute long so few plot details are explained, however we do get a look at Tintin himself and a few money shots, including a ship (the Unicorn I presume) sailing across a desert.

Watch below:

It’s certainly a visual treat, and reminds me of the cartoon made in the 90s. I’m not sure why they’ve intentionality tried to hide the faces (apart from the shot at the end). Maybe they’ve done it because it’s a ‘teaser’, or it could be the case WETA haven’t completed the visuals yet so they don’t want to sell the movie with incomplete motion capture.

Two posters for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Liam — Mon, 16 May 2011 18:45:40 +0000

With the first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn on the horizon Paramount have released two rather amazing posters for the movie. One is a US domestic poster and premiered at AICN, while the international poster appeared online over at Empire.

You can check out the posters below:

US poster

International poster

I am now officially excited for this. When it was announced that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson would be teaming up for Tintin some weren’t that interested as the property isn’t that well known in the US, but with input from both Spielberg, Jackson, and writers Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) and Steven Moffat (Doctor Who) there is clear potential for greatness.

In the film Jamie Bell stars as journalist and adventurer Tintin with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing detective twins Thompson and Thomson and Daniel Craig playing villainous pirate Red Rackham. Paramount will release The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in the US in December, with Sony releasing the film in Europe and overseas in October.

The first teaser trailer will be making its way online tomorrow!

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn trailer coming soon

Liam — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:51:11 +0000

Steven Spielberg finished filming The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in March 2009 after a mere 32 days of shooting with the same performance-capture technology James Cameron used for Avatar. Since then Peter Jackson’s WETA Digital have been working their magic, but instead of aiming for photorealism they’ve gone for a classic Tintin look.

The only marketing thus far has been the release of some stills back in November last year, but now Alberta Film Ratings has updated their site stating a teaser trailer lasting 1 minute and 3 seconds has been submitted by Paramount Pictures, so we can probably expect it to be released sometime soon.

The likely bet is for it to be released alongside Kung Fu Panda 2 as it is also a Paramount movie, which means we only have roughly 2 weeks to wait.

Anthony Horowitz will write Tintin sequel, Prisoners of the Sun

Jack — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:02:37 +0000

British author Anthony Horowitz revealed on Richard Bacon’s Radio 5 talk show this week, that he will be penning the second Tintin movie (to be directed by Peter Jackson), and that it will be based on Hergé’s Tintin comic Prisoners of the Sun.

The first film, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, is of course due out later this year, having been directed by Steven Spielberg. The script for it was written by Joe Cornish, Steven Moffat (Doctor Who) and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz).

Horowitz has previously written the successful Alex Rider series of novels, and has also created and written for UK TV shows Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders. A slightly different style to the writers of The Secret of the Unicorn, then. While Horowitz is the sole writer on the project at the moment, he suspects that others could be added to write later drafts, further down the line. I’m not too familiar with his work, so I’ll just remain hopefully optimistic.

I haven’t interacted with the Tintin books or toons for a while, though if memory serves me correctly, there are some very cool moments / sequences in Prisoners of the Sun, and it should make for an exciting sequel.

This all naturally relies on the first Tintin movie being successful. Personally, I’m hugely excited to see what has been done with the franchise, and can’t wait to see it. It’s not looking hopeful at the moment that the brilliant character Professor Calculus will appear in Secret of the Unicorn though – fortunately, he features in Prisoners of the Sun, so he should pop up in the second film.

Later on, I’d love to see the books set on the moon adapted for the screen (and Jackson luckily, has previously expressed interest in adapting those for a third or fourth movie, and has also noted The Seven Crystal Balls, King Ottoman’s Sceptre and The Calculus Affair as favourites).

I wonder when the sequel would eventually come out. If the films are good, this could make for a really great series. But Peter Jackson’s going to be busy with those two Hobbit movies for a very long time…

Thanks Bleeding Cool.