When I interviewed Andy Serkis last week and he mentioned that he would be filming Tintin starting pretty much right now, he couldn't tell me what the movie was called or even who was playing the main character. But now, thanks to a press release sent to Coming Soon, all has been revealed. Steven Spielberg will be directing Jamie Bell as the titular character in The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, and Defiance co-star Daniel Craig will be joining as the villain Red Rackham.

That's right! Not only did they replace Thomas Sangster in the lead role with the older, more interesting, and more talented Bell, but they've convinced 007 to come along as well. This automatically bodes well for the movie, but there's one more piece of awesome news in the press release: Edgar Wright is co-writing the screenplay with Steven Moffat and Joe Cornish. We probably should have expected it; Wright is a frequent collaborator with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who will be playing The Thompson Twins in Tintin.

There are still no specific details about the plot, but it's probably reasonable to guess the movie will share a plot with The Secret of the Unicorn, a collection of Tintin comic strips that includes the Rackham character. The Wikipedia entry on the book indicates Tintin spends most of the time listening to his buddy Captain Haddock (Serkis) tell a story about pirates, but there's a sequel, Red Rackham's Treasure, that might give Tintin more to do.

You can check out the entire press release at Coming Soon, and don't forget to be excited that this project is finally getting started. It feels like it's been forever, right?