Tintin, arguably Belgium’s most famous export, is on the threshold of superstardom. The fictional reporter created by Georges Remi, alias Hergé, is to star in three animated films directed by the two of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors – Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.

The film-makers said yesterday that they would each direct at least one film about the bequiffed hero, with the first instalment expected in 2009.

Tintin and his companions, who include the whisky-soaked sea dog Captain Haddock and the idiosyncratic Professor Calculus, will be animated using performance capture technology, the technique that Jackson used to create Gollum in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Actors wearing special body suits will create movements that will be recorded by a computer and augmented with digital effects.

Spielberg said that one problem with a live-action version of Tintin’s adventures was that it was difficult to recreate the look of the cartoon strip.

“We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honour the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created,” he said. “Hergé’s characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul which goes far beyond anything we’ve seen with computer-animated characters.”

Spielberg bought the option to create a Tintin film from Hergé in 1982, a year before the cartoonist died. The option lapsed in the late 1980s and became the subject of negotiations with several producers until Spielberg bought the option again in 2003. His company DreamWorks exercised the option in February.

A source at Moulinsart, the company that manages Hergé’s estate, said that it had rejected other offers from Hollywood because none gave the company enough control over the script. Nick Rodwell, who is married to Hergé’s widow and is a producer on the films, will ensure that Spielberg and Jackson do not take liberties with the character.

The source said that Tintin would not be allowed to have a love interest, for example. “I’m sure the accountants in Hollywood would love some of that in there, but they can’t do it. We have approval over that just to make sure they don’t totally ruin it . . . but there is room for some artistic licence.”

Jackson promised that the characters would bear a close resemblance to Hergé’s designs but would not look cartoonish. “We’re making them look pho-torealistic – the fibres of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people – but real Hergé people.”

The directors are understood to have chosen three stories from the 23 titles, but none has been confirmed. It is likely that later stories will be chosen because they feature colourful characters such as Captain Haddock, whose fondness for Scotch frequently throws Tintin’s investigations off course.

Tintin and Captain Haddock had the same names in French and English translations of the books, but other characters were adapted. Professor Tournesol became Professor Calculus, and Dupont et Dupond, bungling detectives who only ever catch their man after Tintin solves the crime, were renamed Thomson and Thompson.

Variety magazine suggests that Spielberg will be free to direct his version in the autumn after he finishes the fourth Indiana Jones film. Jackson is expected to begin work when he finishes his adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones at the end of the year.

Tintin’s adventures, which Hergé drew between 1929 and 1976, have not been distributed widely in America. Although the stories were animated for television, his only cinema outings were a pair of French live-action films in the 1960s. If the new films match the success of the Shrek animations – which have made $1.4 billion worldwide – it will put Tintin’s status beyond doubt: Hercule Poirot will be the second most famous Belgian.

Boy hero of the bourgeois

Georges Remi created his pen-name Hergé from the French pronunciation of his initials in reverse order, RG

He studied the “golden section”, an aesthetic rule that determines where the centre of a scene should be placed

He worked for Le Soir, the only paper permitted by the occupying German forces in Belgium during the Second World War, leading to accusations that he was a collaborator

Tintin was based on Hergé’s younger brother, Paul. After they became estranged, Remi drew the dastardly Colonel Sponz to resemble an older version of Paul

Tintin in the Congo, first published in 1930, now comes with a warning that it contains “bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period – an interpretation that some readers may find offensive”

Tintin v Lord of the Rings

Tintin

200 million copies sold worldwide

Translated into 50 languages

23 separate adventures

First volume published in 1929

First stage production in 2005

Lord of the Rings

100 million copies sold worldwide

Translated into 40 languages

3 separate adventures

First volume published in 1954

First stage production in 2006

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