Sony Pictures Entertainment and Columbia Pictures join together to bring the Smurfs on big screen

Do you remember Smurfs? The blue cartoon characters from the 80’s favorite cartoon series The Smurfs. It was also one of my favorite cartoon series. Well, for the Smurf lovers (including me), there is a good news. Sony Pictures Entertainment and Columbia Pictures are going to jointly produce a Smurfs movie. The studios are planning to make the Smurfs a hybrid live action/animated feature films using CGI. The studios hired David Stem and David Weiss to pen the script. David Weiss has movies Shrek2 &3 to his credit. Jordan Kerner is going to produce the movie for Sony. President of Columbia Pictures, Doug Belgrad, said that that they were very excited to introduce a new new generation to Papa Smurf, Smurfette and other Smurfs in all their ‘three apple tall’ glory. VFX World reports:

"Through Animation and Imageworks, our visual effects and character animation studio, we have an extraordinary capability to mix animation and live action having created a number of fully-realized CG characters in live action films from STUART LITTLE to SPIDER-MAN 3," said Bob Osher, president of digital production for Sony Pictures Ent.

" This is our first hybrid film and we're excited to expand our creative initiatives in this direction" said Minghella, president of production for Sony Pictures Animation.

The SMURFS project is the first new piece of development Minghella and her team will oversee since joining the division in April.

The Smurfs were first created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo. He introduced these characters in a Belgian comics magazine. In 1981, famous cartoon company, Hanna-Barbera started The Smurfs cartoon series which continued till 1990 in the NBC. The series received numerous nominations for Daytime Emmy Awards. Now, the 'three apple tall' guys will be back once again. Sony Pictures will start the licensing process for the Smurfs characters at this year’s licensing Show which has already started in New York.

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