The Smurfs

The Smurfs (French: Les Schtroumpfs) (Dutch: De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic and television franchise centered on a fictional colony of small blue creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. The Smurfs was first created and introduced as a series of comic characters by the Belgian comics artist Peyo (pen name of Pierre Culliford) in 1958, where they were known as Les Schtroumpfs. There are more than one hundred Smurf characters, and their names are based on adjectives that emphasize their characteristics, such as "Jokey Smurf", who likes to play practical jokes on his fellow smurfs. "Smurfette" was the first female Smurf to be introduced in the series. The Smurfs wear Phrygian caps, which came to represent freedom during the modern era.

The word “Smurf” is the original Dutch translation of the French "Schtroumpf", which, according to Peyo, is a word invented during a meal with fellow cartoonist André Franquin, when he could not remember the word salt.

The Smurfs franchise began as a comic and expanded into advertising, films, TV series, ice capades, video games, theme parks, and dolls.

Smurfs: The Lost Village

Smurfs: The Lost Village, previously known as Get Smurfy, is an upcoming American computer-animated adventure-comedy film directed by Kelly Asbury and written by Karey Kirkpatrick and Chris Poche. It is the third feature film from Sony Pictures Animation based on The Smurfs comic book series created by the Belgian comics artist Peyo, and a reboot film of Sony's live-action/animated film series. The film stars Demi Lovato as Smurfette, Mandy Patinkin as Papa Smurf, Rainn Wilson as Gargamel, Joe Manganiello as Hefty Smurf, Jack McBrayer as Clumsy Smurf and Danny Pudi as Brainy Smurf. The film is set for a March 31, 2017 release.

Voice cast

Production

On May 10, 2012, just two weeks after they announced production of The Smurfs 2, Sony Pictures Animation and Columbia Pictures were already developing a script for The Smurfs 3 with scribes Karey Kirkpatrick and Chris Poche.Hank Azaria, who played Gargamel in the first two movies, revealed that the third film "might actually deal with the genuine origin of how all these characters ran into each other way back when." Unlike the first two live action/computer-animated hybrid films, the third film will be entirely computer-animated and won't be a sequel.

The Smurfs (TV series)

The Smurfs (also known as simply Smurfs and syndicated as Smurfs' Adventures) is an American-Belgian animated fantasy-comedy television series that aired on NBC from September 12, 1981, to December 2, 1989. Made by Hanna-Barbera Productions, it is based on the Belgian comic series by the same name, created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (who also served as story supervisor of this adaptation) and aired for 256 episodes with a total of 418 stories, excluding three cliffhanger episodes and seven specials.

History

In 1976, Stuart R. Ross, an American media and entertainment entrepreneur who saw the Smurfs while traveling in Belgium, entered into an agreement with Editions Dupuis and Peyo, acquiring North American and other rights to the characters, whose original name was "les Schtroumpfs". Subsequently, Ross launched the Smurfs in the United States in association with a California company, Wallace Berrie and Co., whose figurines, dolls and other Smurf merchandise became a hugely popular success. NBC President Fred Silverman's daughter, Melissa, had a Smurf doll of her own that he had bought for her at a toy shop while they were visiting Aspen, Colorado. Silverman thought that a series based on the Smurfs might make a good addition to his Saturday-morning lineup.

The Smurfs 2

The Smurfs 2 is a 2013 American 3D live-action/computer-animated family comedy film and a sequel to the 2011 film The Smurfs. It is loosely based on The Smurfs comic-book series created by the Belgian comics artist Peyo. It is the second installment of a projected trilogy, produced by Sony Pictures Animation and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film is directed by Raja Gosnell, who helmed the first, with all the main cast returning. New cast members include Christina Ricci and J. B. Smoove as members of the Naughties, and Brendan Gleeson as Patrick Winslow's stepfather. The film was released on July 31, 2013 and is dedicated to Jonathan Winters, who voiced Papa Smurf and died on April 11, 2013.

Like the first film, The Smurfs 2 was met with negative critical reception, with a review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes giving the film even worse rating than to its predecessor. Although making more than three times of its budget, The Smurfs 2 earned over $200 million less than the first film. Its gross of $347 million was seen by Sony as a disappointment, which Box Office Mojo labelled as "an unprecedented drop for a closely-timed family sequel" and attributed to the negative reception of the first film and to the strong competition coming from Despicable Me 2, another family film.