Here’s
a recent message on the
aintitcool.com site, about the movie.
I have no reason to doubt that a film will be made - it isn’t the length of the journey that matters to me; it’s the quality of the finished product. If they have used those twenty years to haggle out the do’s and don’ts (to say if he is allowed to Americanize things or not etc., what books if any, he is allowed to adapt, or if it has to be original, so on and so forth), then hopefully it will be great.
I remember an animated Tintin doing an “interview” on Janet Street-Porter’s unwieldy “yoof” programme
Network 7 (so early 1980s), from Calculus’s rocket in orbit (allegedly), saying that the film was to be called (something like) “Tintin and the Lost City of Ivory” - so maybe the question has been over whether to adapt or do something new.
Also, in the nineties, Moulinsart was allegdly cold on a live-action movie preferring the idea of CGI 3d animation, so again that may have delayed Spielberg too.
It took twenty years for the Spider-Man movie to get made (I used to have a nice trade advert from Screen International of Spidey web-slinging his way over a city with something along the lines of “Coming Next Summer!”, which I cut out in about 1984…). It also took Jack Nicholson twenty years to get “The Two Jakes” made.
And as for “Mary Poppins II”… PL Travers managed to go to her grave in 1996, having held Disney at bay for around three decades over script/ casting approval, although they tried almost constantly over the years since the original film to get it off the ground (should be a joke about flying umbrellas in there somewhere) - and they still haven’t made it yet!