Red Rackham’s Treasure & Crab With The Golden Claws to be the Tintin Movies

Casting for the Tintin Movie has begun and we can be sure that The Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackham’s Treasure will be the basis for one of the films at least. They are casting the Bird Brothers, Nestor, Sakharine (one of the people after the model ship), Aristides Silk (the pick pocket) and Red Rackham himself who are all in The Secret of the Unicorn. Mrs Finch (Tintin’s Landlady) and two kidnappers (presumably Allen & Ernie from the cast list) have a seen on page 35 of Secret of the Unicorn. Presumably Mr Crabtree is the market stall owner Tintin buy’s the ship from.

In the Crab With The Golden Claws, Mrs Finch makes an appearance plus there are Lt. Delacourt and Ahmed from the fort in Afghar (page 33). Omar Ben Salaad is the leader of the smugglers. The unnamed seaplane pilot & co-pilot are probably the ones who attack Tintin & Capt Haddock.

Some roles are new and not in the books. Barnaby (an American Interpol Inspector), Merrydew (a rival reporter) and Wetherbuck (Tintin’s Editor). Merrydew and Wetherbuck will possibly appear in multiple films so presumably they have been added to make Tintin’s world a bit more believable. Barnaby may be replacement for Bunji Kuraki, the Japanese police inspector who is kidnapped by the smugglers.

In The Crab With The Golden Claw, Tintin meets Captain Haddock for the first time and in The Secret of the Unicorn, the pair first meet Professor Calculus. By the end of Red Rackham’s Treasure, Captain Haddock owns Marlinspike Hall so this makes a nice development of characters across the films and nicely sets things up for any future films. It is still not clear if this is the cast and plot-lines for just the Jackson and Spielberg films or whether these will cover all three films.

Still, it looks like I was wrong about my predictions of which books would be made in to the films.