Steven Spielberg’s computer animated 3D adaptation of Belgian comic book hero Tintin premiered in Brussels on Saturday, aiming to capture a new global audience for the adventures of the boy reporter with the trademark quiff. In The Adventures of Tintin – The Secret of the Unicorn, Spielberg, who directed blockbusters including Indiana Jones, E.T. and Jaws, aims to bridge the gap between Herge’s comics and the big screen by employing a technique similar to that deployed in James Cameron’s record-breaking Avatar.

Tintin may have a new benefactor. Filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are in the process of trying to line up a co-financing and co-distribution partner for their in-the-works trilogy of “Tintin” films, set up at Paramount Pictures. The director-producers are trying to entice Sony Pictures, which is now in discussions with Paramount, to help finance the films and take on international distribution.

Steven Spielberg aims to raise more than $1 billion in third-party financing to reinvent DreamWorks as a separate company that once again owns the movies it makes. As for distribution, Spielberg wants to bolt his roost at Paramount for Universal, which wants to land Spielberg and DreamWorks after losing out to Paramount in that quest a couple years ago. But on recommendation from his advisers, Spielberg has allowed a bidding war to begin among studios for the rights to distribute future DreamWorks movies.

Steven Spielberg’s long-gestating project about US president Abraham Lincoln will be the director’s next project after the first live-action Tintin film which goes into production this September. Spielberg says he will begin shooting of the Lincoln biopic at the beginning of 2009 “so that it can also open in the same year as Lincoln’s 200th anniversary which comes round then.”