10 Movie Sequels Stuck In Production Hell

The performance captured adventures of Belgian boy detective Tintin were conceived since their inception as a trilogy. You might imagine that A-list directorial names like Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson would find it easy to get support for an ambitious project like this, but that was far from the case.

From the start, Tintin's backers at Sony were only willing to finance two films (potentially one directed by Spielberg followed by one by Jackson) with the chances of a third conditional on the success of the first two. Still, even that should have guaranteed a follow-up for 2011's The Secret Of The Unicorn.

A story adapting the two-part series The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners Of The Sun - in which the kidnap of eccentric fan favourite Professor Calculus prompts an adventure to a lost Incan city - was announced with producer Kathleen Kennedy suggesting that filming could begin as early as 2012. That was right before she jumped ship to become the new president of Lucasfilm.

Jackson, meanwhile, had to repeatedly delay his commitment to direct once his attachment to write and produce The Hobbit for Guillermo del Toro became a directorial gig and one which soon expanded from two movies to three. By the time that the final Hobbit came out in 2014 Jackson just wanted to take a well earned break from filmmaking.

"Tintin is not dead," Spielberg told reporters in 2018, adding that Jackson would start work on a new script in the near future. Given that it takes at least three years to film and animate such an all-performance capture movie, though, even the most optimistic estimate wouldn't bring us Prisoners Of The Sun before 2023.