Variety is reporting that Steven Spielberg is about to wrap up 32 days of motion capture photography for The Secret of the Unicorn, the first in a planned trilogy of mo-cap productions based on Herge’s Tintin graphic novels.  After finishing the photography Spielberg is basically handing off the project to producer Peter Jackson, who demonstrated his considerable mo-cap chops in his Lord of the Rings and King Kong movies.  Jackson will spend up to 18 months working on the special effects and backgrounds for the film, though according to Variety, Spielberg will be able to keep track of the proceedings via a special video conferencing hook-up with Jackson’s New Zealand-based Weta workshops.

Paramount, which is releasing and co-financing the project (see “New Tintin Film Deal”), is actively seeking licensees for the project and is indicating to prospective manufacturers that the 2010 release date is firm.  One real benefit of this project should be a surge in new Tintin product licensing based on the film.  Tintin licensing, which 30 years ago was extremely robust (especially in Europe), has been very tightly controlled in recent years. Since the movie uses the original Herge iconography and Paramount is being very aggressive in pursuing licensing opportunities for the Tintin trilogy, there is potential for a major expansion of high quality Tintin merchandise.