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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Sony's Livespire : A theatrical revolution

On May 9, Sony Pictures Entertainment Incorporation announced to distribute its digitally filmed live sports and other events in Japanese theatres. The new service called Livespire will be launched on May 10 2008. On that day, “Riding the Metro,” a musical will be shown in three 109 Cinemas chain theatres. Operated by Tokyu Recreation, Sony will show the musical in four more 109 theatres by June. Variety reports:

In June, in cooperation with the Amuse talent shop and the Nelke Planning legit theater company, Sony will also distrib the musical "Frogs” in four theaters in the 109 Cinemas chain.

The musicals are shot using Sony CineAlta HDC-F950 cameras, while Sony subsid Sony PCL handles filming and editing. Sony plans to use the Livespire service to market not only digital content, but its digital hardware, including the Sony-developed system for digital theater projection.

Within the current fiscal year, Sony will expand this service to 10 theatres and film five live events. Currently, only 100 Japanese theatres have digital projection systems but this number will increase in the next three years.

In my opinion, it is a very good business. Till now, we know that movie theatres only show movies but not any more. The 80^th Academy Award ceremony was shown by projection in various places all over America. With this new arrangement of Sony, now people can enjoy such events in theatres just like movies.

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