Two years ago, Sony Animation shocked a lot of us when they revealed that they wouldn't be continuing their Smurfs movie franchise, but rather start over and make a film that would be all-animated and would channel the original comics by Peyo.
Not too long ago, they announced some of the cast and showed an image that gave a good idea of what kind of animation style they were going for, something similar to Blue Sky's The Peanuts Movie and the aborted Genndy Tartakovsky take on Popeye. The title was also revealed to be Get Smurfy, which quite frankly wasn't to my liking.
It's not called that anymore, thankfully. It's now called Smurfs: The Lost Village...
USA Today reported on it yesterday, revealing some new cast members, new images, and some words from director Kelly Asbury.
The plot of this movie will be about Smurfette, Clumsy, Hefty, and Brainy's search for a lost, "legendary" Smurf village while inevitably dealing with the villainous Gargamel. That's all for now, but at least it's not "The Smurfs come to the real world."
Joining the cast that includes Demi Lovato, Mandy Pantinkin, and Rainn Wilson are Jack McBrayer (as Clumsy), Danny Pudi (as Brainy), and Joe Manganiello (as Hefty). Yes it's pretty star-studded, but it's cool that they cast McBrayer, as he's no stranger to voice work. (Fix-It Felix and Wander, anyone?) Hopefully the script is a-ok and respects the comics, and just makes for a fun movie that is a country mile from the live-action hybrid films. It doesn't have much of a high bar to reach.
Anyways, as I've said before, I'm glad that Sony even went as far as rebooting this whole thing. Smurfs 2 may have underwhelmed domestically, but it was a big hit overseas, so the movie was profitable. Sony could've very well went ahead with a third hybrid feature and called it a day, but they didn't. It appears that they want this installment to be of higher quality, so much so that Asbury himself set up a production blog to chronicle the making of it. I do like the art style very much, as I want to see more CG films that go this direction.
It's still set to open on March 31, 2017. I'm cautiously optimistic for now. What do you think?