'Tintin' earns Rs 7.35 crore in opening weekend

Steven Spielberg's computer animated 3D adaptation of Belgian comic book hero Tintin aims to capture a new global audience for the adventures of the boy reporter with the trademark quiff.

The film is directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish.

The script is based on three of the stories: The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure.

The Adventures of Tintin was first penned in 1929 by Brussels-born author Georges Remi, better known as Herge.

The series is already hugely popular in most of Europe and Spielberg said he hoped his film would find fresh fans.

American audiences will look at this as an original movie, Spielberg told reporters.

If it is successful in America, perhaps for the first time in 80 years the books will start being published in America.

Spielberg, who sported crossed Belgian and American flags on his lapel during the pre-screening press conference, after which he was made a commander of the order of the Belgian crown.

In The Adventures of Tintin - The Secret of the Unicorn, Spielberg aims to bridge the gap between Herge's comics and the big screen.

Spielberg has directed blockbusters including Indiana Jones, E.T. and Jaws.

Spielberg has employed a technique similar to that deployed in James Cameron's record-breaking Avatar.

Actor Jamie Bell portrays Tintin.

Actors including Jamie Bell, who portrays Tintin, had to adapt to acting in a studio wearing a special suit which registered his movements.

The data was then transformed into a computer generated, three dimensional, image of his character.

Spielberg said he was in touch with Herge, shortly before the author died in 1983, about adapting Tintin.

Herge was a big fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark and actually on the telephone said he wanted Spielberg to adapt his books into movies.

For Belgium's comic book store owners, renewed interest in Tintin is good news.

Early reviews for the film, which combines three of Tintin's comic book adventures, were broadly positive.

The Belgian press was particularly glowing about Spielberg's adaptation.

Action and humour dominate in a very pleasant spectacle, Belgian French-language magazine Le Vif wrote in a review.

Herge would have loved this Tintin, full of character, French daily Le Soir wrote.

Some British reviews were less enthusiastic, arguing that the computer graphics made the characters seem dull.

Tintin has also made negative headlines as a lawsuit alleging racism in Herge's second book Tintin in the Congo commenced in Belgium in late September.

The case, brought by Congolese-born campaigner Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, says Herge's depiction of native Africans is racist and propagates a colonialist view of the continent.

Spielberg says the 3-D technique is not popular with all movie buffs and filmmakers should not blindly employ the technique.

The multiple Oscar-winning director recently worked as a producer on 3D movies 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' and 'The Adventures of Tintin'.

The full length trailer of the much awaited film 'The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn', is out.

Tintin in the Congo was published in 1931 and Bienvenu is taking action against a modern version of the original.

The series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, with translations published in more than 80 languages and more than 350 million copies of the books sold to date.

The series first appeared in French in Le Petit Vingtieme, a children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le XXe Siecle on 10 January 1929.

The comic strip series has long been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Herge's signature ligne claire style.

Tintin is a young Belgian reporter who becomes involved in dangerous cases in which he takes heroic action to save the day.

Almost every adventure features Tintin hard at work in his investigative journalism, but he is seldom seen actually turning in a story without first getting caught up in some misadventure.

He is a young man of more or less neutral attitudes. However, he does not seem to have a boss, nor any coworkers, nor an employer of any kind.

It is stated, in the opening panel of the first book, that he works for Le Petit XXe and is one of their top reporters.

Snowy (Milou in the original Belgian-French version), a white Fox terrier, is Tintin's four-legged companion.

They regularly save each other from perilous situations. Snowy frequently "speaks" to the reader through his thoughts (often displaying a dry sense of humour), which are supposedly not heard by the human characters in the story except in Tintin in America, wherein he explains to Tintin his absence for a period of time in the book.

Like Captain Haddock, Snowy is fond of the Loch Lomond Single Malt brand of whisky, and his occasional bouts of drinking tend to get him into trouble, as does his arachnophobia.

Captain Archibald Haddock, a seafaring captain of disputed ancestry (he may be of Belgian, French, or United Kingdom origin), is Tintin's best friend, and was introduced in The Crab with the Golden Claws.

Haddock was initially depicted as a weak and alcoholic character, but later became more respectable.

Captain Haddock evolves to become genuinely heroic and even a socialite after he finds a treasure captured by his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock in the episode Red Rackham's Treasure.