Anthony Horowitz To Pen Tintin Sequel

/Film reports that Alex Rider and Foyle's War creator Anthony Horowitz will pen the second movie in Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's projected Tintin trilogy. The film will be based on Hergé’s classic graphic novel Prisoners of the Sun, an Incan adventure. I guess that puts to rest the previous rumors that Jackson would choose one of the more spyish Tintin adventures, like King Ottokar's Sceptre or The Calculus Affair, for the film he's supposed to direct to follow up Spielberg's first entry. So spy fans lose a spy story but gain a spy writer on the sequel. "I’m writing a feature film even as we speak. I’ve been hired to write Tintin," he told BBC Radio 5 according to the website. "The Secret of the Unicorn is being directed by Steven Spielberg and was written originally by Steven Moffat, of course the writer of Doctor Who in this country. He did a couple of drafts, then it was taken over by Edgar Wright." Joe Cornish also contributed to the final script. "They’ve got [that] coming out at Christmas and if that film is a success and works and gets an audience, I’m writing the sequel to it, Prisoners of the Sun, which Peter Jackson is going to direct." Of course with Jackson tied up on The Hobbit for the next few years, that puts the sequel a long way off.

Horowitz is certainly keeping busy following the end of his lucrative Young Adult spy series earlier this month.  Besides Tintin, he's already been announced as the first ever officially sanctioned Sherlock Holmes continuation novelist, with a book due this fall. Personally, what I'd like to see from him more than anything is another season of Foyle's War, though there's a sticky rights situation making that difficult.