Tintin Forums

Just a quick update to say that (if you don’t follow @tintinologist on Twitter) Anthony Horowitz has tweeted a reply to an enquiry about his work on the next movie:

Tintinologist: @AnthonyHorowitz How goes the Tintin script, please…? Giving nothing away, has the choice been made of which book or books yet?

Anthony Horowitz: @tintinologist Going well, I think. And, yes, the story has been chosen.

Good news!

Very good news. Now, it would be great to know what stories they're adapting.

Well, I think I prefer not knowing it so quickly, remembering that the speculation about the story was nagging my mood a lot.

Anyway, good luck for Anthony Horowitz, I hope the script can be finished well and quickly ;).

Not sure whether this has been mentioned before, but Anthony Horowitz created and wrote the BBC series 'Crime Traveller' (1997) in which Holly's flat had Tintin book cover posters on the walls: either a coincidence or he's a long-time fan.

Oh, he's definitely a long-time Tintin fan. I've read interviews with him where he's said so, and I can think of at least one Tintin reference/homage in one of his books: a rainforest tribe called the Arumbayas in one of his non-Alex-Ryder children's books, The Switch. There may be others.

That said, Anthony Horowitz has very much his own own authorial voice and writing style, and the character of Alex Ryder seems to me to be the antithesis of Tintin in some ways. That's not a criticism, of course!

Slightly unfair of you to bring that up, Rocky… I mean, I bet most people have forgiven him for that by now… ;-)

I know it was criticised, but in Anthony's defence I enjoyed it a lot. Perhaps I should file it under guilty pleasures, along with Belvision cartoons ;-)

tintinsgf, what do you mean by "nagging your mood"?

Yes, Anthony Horowitz is a long-time Tintin fan. He's an excellent writer but his writings are quite different to Tintin. Still, he'd handle the drama and eccentric characters well.

I enjoyed it too. I loved the way in which a lot of strange events are actually explained when the detectives go back in time: like when one of them is shot and rushed to hospital in a coma, but turns out to have been faking it.

So many time-travel stories rely on events actually being changed completely: like the detective would actually have avoided the shot (and caused a space-time continuum spilt and alternative reality and all that nonsense).

He's also written scripts for "Foyle's War", "Agatha Christie's Poirot" and "Midsomer Murders". That might actually encourage my mother to watch the next Tintin film.

According to his imdb entry, the title is: "The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure".

It’s not really any more or less nonsensical than any other time travel conceit, really – Crime Traveller was as bogged down in the paradoxes of time travel as any similar series, and even used one to kill off a character in a “loop of infinity”, which was just as arbitrary and contradictory as you suggest other series are.

It was also decreed for no real reason that a time-traveller could not meet their past self (why not, other than it’s a stock-in-trade of the genre?), nor could they visit the same event twice, which smacks of your “all that nonsense” to me… ;-)


He not only wrote Foyle’s War, he created it too. He’s written all bar three episodes (including two he co-wrote) of what has been shown, and the scripts of three more, to be screened next year - he has said that those will be his last, although the series may continue without him.


It’s not to say that it isn’t, but this is purely guess work on someone’s part at this moment in time; anyone can submit information to IMdB, and it’s unikely to have come fro Mr. Horowitz or the producers, who will no doubt announce things in their own good time with a degree of fanfare, and not just let it dribble out on a movie site.