Last month, Peter Jackson hopped onboard the ‘Gollum’ movie, but only as a producer. Andy Serkis is directing that film which means, not counting his docs, Jackson’s last film as a director is still 2014’s “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”.
It does sound as though if Jackson ever directs again then it’ll be the animated sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 2011 film, “The Adventures of Tintin.” Serkis, who is set to return to the role of Capt. Haddock, a temperamental sea captain, has just given us a promising update about the long in development sequel.
French journalist Alexandre Loos met Serkis at the Annecy film festival and was told by the actor that “Peter Jackson is definitely still working on it.” So, this negates any of the rumors that the film had been scrapped for good. It’s not like the first one made much money at the U.S. box office, but it was a huge hit in France.
It was back in 2018 that Spielberg announced Jackson’s intent in directing ‘Tintin 2’:
Peter Jackson has to do the second part. Normally, if all goes well, he will soon start working on the script. As it takes two years of animation work on the film, I wouldn’t expect to see it be released for at least another three years. But Peter will stick with it. Tintin is not dead!
The sequel would be based on two source materials, “The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun” and “The Seven Crystal Ballsand The Temple of the Sun.” The 2011 film did the same thing by adapting three books: “The Secret of the Unicorn,” “The Crab with the Golden Claws” and “Red Rackham’s Treasure.”
Given that it’s been 10 years since Jackson has directed a film, not counting helming a few documentaries, including 2019’s stunning WWI effort “They Shall Grow Old” and 2021 Beatles doc “Get Back,” I would imagine that he still has an itch to come back to feature filmmaking.
The first three ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies, directed by Jackson, garnered immense praise and were box-office behemoths. Each installment ended up with a slew of Oscar nominations, including a Best Picture win for 2003’s ‘The Return of the King.’ Jackson followed those up with a trilogy of ‘Hobbit’ movies, which were less successful and put the movie franchise, and Jackson, in hibernation. Do you blame him? He made hundreds of millions off of the ‘Lords of the Rings’ franchise and was just living off of those riches.
Save for the six Lord of the Rings/Hobbit films, Jackson’s pre-hibernation filmography includes the likes of “Heavenly Creatures” (UNDERRATED!), “King Kong,” “Bad Taste,” “The Frighteners,” and “The Lovely Bones.”
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