Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are to move ahead with plans for a second film in their planned Tintin trilogy following the success of the first film in the series, Total Film reports.

Jackson will direct the followup to last year's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, the title of which has not yet been decided. Spielberg said the New Zealand film-maker would go into production on the sequel immediately after he finishes work on The Hobbit, his current two-part adaptation of the JRR Tolkien fantasy novel. The film-makers always planned to make a Tintin trilogy together, but were forced to make the films one step at a time after studio Paramount baulked at the prospect of financing three films upfront.

"Peter's doing it," said Spielberg in an interview. "I wanted to do it, but Peter has to because we made a deal. I said, 'I'll direct the first one, you direct the second one.'

"And Peter, of course, is going to do it right after he finishes photography on The Hobbit. He'll go right into the 31, 21 days of performance capture."

Spielberg refused to reveal which Tintin books would be used as the basis for the sequel, despite suggestions from producer Kathleen Kennedy that it might borrow from Hergé's 1956 cold war-themed story The Calculus Affair.

"We're not telling the world what books we're basing the second movie on yet," he said. "We haven't decided that yet. She's throwing a monkey wrench into your story! It could be that. I like The Calculus Affair. So it could be.

"We have completed a story outline now. We have a writer on it. I'm just not declaring what it is. It will be more than one book, but no more than two."

Released in the UK in October, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn was based on three of the original comic books: The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicorn (1943), and Red Rackham's Treasure, and was Spielberg's first ever animated film. It was well received by critics and performed strongly at the box office, taking $371m (£235m) worldwide. The Adventures of Tintin won the Golden Globe for best animated film last month but was not nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the equivalent Oscar.