This was on Comics2Film. I love the Smurfs, so I'm looking forward to this.
Smurfs Are Back!
Paramount plays the blues…in CG form
19 July 2005
Donnie Darko's discussion of the sexual practices of Smurfs notwithstanding, it's been a long time since we saw any new adventures from the small blue gnome-type things themselves. But all that is about the change, with the news that the Smurfs, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (see here) before them, are about to make the leap from the small screen to the big, in CGI form.
The Smurfs, for the 3 people on Earth who don't know that, are small blue creatures "three apples high" who live in a town of mushroom shaped houses in the woods. There, they hang out in their nifty white trousers-and-hat combos – except for Papa Smurf, who wears red, and Smurfette, who wears whatever she wants – and try to avoid the attentions of the dastardly sorceror Gargamel, who's determined to wipe them out. Presumably he's offended by their habit of looking the same, dressing the same and resembling blueberries. Or perhaps it's their habit of replacing random words with the word "smurf" as in "What the smurfing smurf are you doing with Smurfette, you smurf?"
Over the 47 years since they first appeared in a Belgian cartoon strip, they've gone into space, experienced civil war and befriended wandering knight errants. Their exact biology or means of reproduction remain a mystery – Baby Smurf was delivered by stork, for example – but they're popular all over the world, thanks to the comics and a cartoon series in the 1980s.
The new film is scheduled to come out in 2008, to celebrate their 50th birthday, and producers are hoping that it will be the first of a trilogy. Herbert Ratner, writer of the upcoming film Mr Lucky with Cedric The Entertainer. However, the producers aren't giving anything away about the plot, which will remain under wraps for now.