Pegg and Frost cast in Spielberg's 3-D Tintin film

Tintin may be Belgium's best-known export, but Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg's forthcoming adaptation of the Hergé comic strip is taking on a distinctly British flavour. As reported earlier, Andy Serkis is to play the fresh-faced reporter's curmudgeonly sidekick Captain Haddock; now comes a report from Ain't It Cool News that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have been cast as bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson.

It will be the Shaun of the Dead and Spaced duo's first onscreen pairing since Hot Fuzz (2007). The site also says the $135m (£92.6m) project will start shooting in just a month, so we can expect more casting news soon. Top of Jackson and Spielberg's list will no doubt be a replacement for their original Tintin, 17-year-old Thomas Sangster, who was forced to drop out when the project was delayed due to funding issues.

Thomson and Thompson, known as Dupond and Dupont in the original books, are a pair of clumsy, thoroughly incompetent detectives who appear pretty much identical, bar the shape of their moustaches (Thomson's is slightly wider). Their familial relationship is somewhat unclear, although they are occasionally referred to as twins or brothers.

Jackson and Spielberg's Tintin was originally conceived as a trilogy, but Universal's refusal to countenance their demand for a percentage of the gross seems to have consigned the two sequels in limbo. Paramount and Sony are now co-financing the first film, which Spielberg will direct, with Jackson in the role of producer. The Kiwi director of the Lord of the Rings films had always intended to take charge of the second film, but even that seems to be up in the air in credit-crunched Hollywood.

Tintin will be shot in digital 3-D using performance-capture technology, a technique Serkis is well accustomed to – he blazed the trail for it with his performance as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and developed it further when he portrayed King Kong in Jackson's 2005 remake. Tintin is due in cinemas in 2010.

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