Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz discuss Peter Jackson's Tintin sequel

Steven Spielberg's first directorial effort since 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn - enjoyed a healthy opening this past weekend, topping the UK box office with £6.7m and banking a combined European opening of $56.2m. Although the film isn't set to arrive in North America until December 21st, talk has already shifted towards the proposed sequel, with Spielberg recently revealing that 'forward planning' is already well underway on the follow-up: "[Sony and Paramount] were willing to do one movie with us and then give us the financial werewithal to develop a script, do all the visual storyboards and get it really in launch position... so we can launch pretty quickly on a second movie."

Tintin's second motion capture adventure will see Spielberg handing over directing duties to The Secret of the Unicorn producer Peter Jackson, who is of course busy with his return to Middle-Earth for The Lord of the Rings prequels, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. It was expected that the script for the sequel - written by Anthony Horowitz (Foyle's War, The Gathering), who steps in for The Secret of the Unicorn's writing team of Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat - would be based on two of Herge's Tintin albums, Prisoners of the Sun and The Seven Crystal Balls, but Horowitz has since dispelled the rumours in an interview with the BBC: "I can tell you that I think the second film is not going to be Prisoners of the Sun. What it is going to be is still under discussion. I’ve had meetings with the directors and producers and we’ve talked about ideas and action sequences. At the moment I’m trying to put together a story that will please everybody. It’s a very difficult one to do."

The likes of Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are all expected to return should the sequel receive the official green light, while Spielberg will also remain involved in a producing capacity as he tackles directing duties on his next two projects, Lincoln and Robopocalypse.