"The Lord of the Rings" maestro Peter Jackson revealed Wednesday that he is taking on another cult classic -- "Tintin".
The New Zealand director said that he has been working on a script for a film about the boy reporter created by the Belgian cartoonist Herge nearly a century ago.
Jackson said his film would be a sequel to Steven Spielberg's animated film "The Adventures of Tintin" in 2011, which he co-produced.
"The deal was that Steven directs one and I direct another," he said at the Cannes Film Festival, where he received an honorary Palme d'Or lifetime's achievement award Tuesday.
"So Steven did his film, then for 15 years I haven't made mine. I feel very awkward about that," he said. But he hasn't been wasting any time while at Cannes.
In between galas and picking up his prize, "I've been working with Fran (Walsh, his partner) on another Tintin script.
"I'm in the hotel room down the road writing the script and sending pages to New Zealand," he told AFP.
While he refused to say which of the Tintin albums he was drawing on, he hinted strongly that it will begin where Spielberg's film finished, with "Red Rackham's Treasure".
"It's not the way that it carries on, but it begins exactly where the last film ends," he told AFP.
- 'Old fat rebel' -
Jackson said he makes "films that I really want to see myself", and the Tintin movie will be no different.
"When we get a draft done we will send it to Steven (Spielberg)... and he might say that he doesn't like it, and maybe we should do it with different books. But I don't think he will."
Jackson, who turned JRR Tolkien's trilogy into one of the biggest box office franchises ever, said he loved Tintin, whose adventurous japes in comics like "Tintin in Tibet" and "The Blue Lotus" have been a staple of European children's bookshelves since the 1930s.
Jackson, who owns Weta FX, one of the world's most important special effects companies, which has worked on "Avatar" as well as "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, also weighed into the debate on artificial intelligence that has been raging at Cannes.
He said that while he thought AI is "going to destroy the world", when it comes to its use in film, "I don't dislike it at all."
"I mean, to me, it's just a special effect. It's no different from other special effects."
While he later played down his remarks "about the robots taking over", he said he could not see AI going much further than the "cowboyland" of short videos on Instagram and YouTube.
"To make feature films the rights have all to be authorized and lawyers have to go through things with a toothcomb," something that would limit AI's use.
Jackson, 64, said he still sees himself as the rebel who was kicked out of the Palais des Festivals in Cannes for wearing shorts when he premiered his debut film, "Bad Taste" in 1987, but was now an "old fat rebel".
And he said he still hopes to make a movie inspired by the British Dambusters raid on the Ruhr dams in Germany during World War II if "I live long enough".
