Steven Spielberg is ready to recycle some Tintin.
The multi-Oscar'd filmmaker and his longtime producing partner, Kathleen Kennedy, are in talks to acquire the feature-film rights to Tintin in hopes of launching a movie franchise based on the popular European comic strip about a fearless young reporter, according to the Hollywood trade papers.
Spielberg will produce the project with Kennedy, though it's doubtful he'll direct.
Based on the work of late Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, the inaugural film in the series would follow the titular hero as he travels the globe, fighting crime with his loyal white-haired fox terrier, Snowy, and a group of oddball friends, including quick-tempered mentor Captain Haddock, the absent-minded Professor Cuthbert Calculus, opera diva Bianca Castafiore and bowler-wearing, blundering twin police officers Thomson and Thompson.
Although not that well known in the United States, the young reporter, known for his kooky coiffure, has a huge international following.
Spielberg and Kennedy have been trying to get a Tintin film off the drawing board for nearly two decades. They originally bought the rights to the comic-book hero back in 1983 through Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment banner. But the option on Tintin eventually ran out, Kennedy left and formed her own production company with producer-husband Frank Marshall, and Spielberg went on to found DreamWorks.
But Spielberg didn't let Tintin stray too far. This year, he approached the current rights owner, Nick Rodwell, about taking out another option, hoping to finally give the international adventure series the blockbuster treatment.
Spielberg and Kennedy currently have feelers out to screenwriters to adapt the project, which will be a coproduction between Universal Pictures and DreamWorks.
Using the pseudonym Hergé, Remi first published Tintin in 1929 in a French-language Belgian newspaper, Le Petit Vingtième. Over the subsequent four decades, he produced more than 22 comic-book collections, which have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 50 languages. During the 1960s, producers in France turned Tintin into several animated TV series and movies.
In 1990, North American company Nelvana tried a new animated series. There was also a live-action stage musical based on one of the Tintin comic books, Prisoners of the Sun, which debuted in Antwerp, Belgium, in September 2001.
Meanwhile, the mastermind behind E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is executive-producing an epic 20-hour cable miniseries, Taken, which premieres December 2 on the Sci Fi Channel.
Spielberg's next feature directing effort, the action-caper Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, opens on Christmas Day.