Here are the facts as revealed by Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment today:

• The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will hit U.S. theatres in December 2011, about a month after it reaches the rest of the world.
• It’ll also be released in 3-D where available.
• Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook are all said to be involved.

Here’s why I’m not sold on the idea that Tintin is going to put up the numbers the studios are expecting: I don’t know anybody that claims any fondness for Tintin, either as a comic book or as a cartoon.  Why, then, will people suddenly lose their shit with joy and rush to the theatres for the motion capture release?  We’re told repeatedly that Tintin is a character beloved of children and adults anywhere, but the evidence simply doesn’t back that up.

Take French class, for instance.  If, like me, you studied the language to any level at school, you inevitably would have been presented with a Tintin comic book for perusal at some point.  At my school, at least, this was not a popular teaching tool.  Rather than thanking the gods that we were given something other than verb tables or Le Monde to look at, the word “Tintin” was invariably met with a collective groan from the class.  That, to me, really says something about its popularity.  If a comic book is so dull that a classroom of twelve-year-olds would rather do real work than read it, you’re probably not talking about a top-level franchise.

What I’m trying to say is that I’ll be giving the ginger Belgian and his goofy dog a miss in 2011.  Wake me up when they adapt Asterix (again).