The Smurfs (film)

In Smurf Village, the Smurfs are preparing for the Festival of the Blue Moon. Papa Smurf sees a vision of Clumsy Smurf reaching for a dragon wand and Gargamel capturing the Smurfs. Shortly after, Clumsy leaves to pick smurfroot and ends up leading Gargamel into the village. The Smurfs flee and Clumsy unknowingly runs toward the Forbidden Falls, with Papa, Smurfette, Grouchy, Brainy and Gutsy following him. The blue moon appears and creates a vortex that spirits the Smurfs to New York City. Gargamel and his pet cat Azrael follow them. Clumsy falls into Patrick Winslow's box and is unknowingly carried away to his and his pregnant wife Grace's apartment. Clumsy comes out of the box amd finds himself face to face with Patrick's dog Elway. Frightened, Clumsy starts to run but Elway follows him. He takes refuge in the bathroom. Intrigued by what he sees, he ends up making a mess. Papa, Smurfette, Brainy, Grouchy and Gutsy, having followed Clumsy and rode the roof of Patrick's taxi and hidden in Patrick's box, reveal themselves and explain their situation. The Winslows befriend them and give them shelter for the night. The next day, needing to find a "stargazer", the Smurfs follow Patrick to his workplace at Anjelou Cosmetics, believing he is a fortune-teller. Meanwhile, Gargamel extracts Smurf essence from a lock of Smurfette's hair, which gives him magic powers. While searching for the Smurfs, he wanders into Anjelou and impresses Patrick's boss, Odile, by restoring her elderly mother's youth with his magic. Upon hearing of Patrick's connection to the Smurfs, Gargamel chases him and the Smurfs into FAO Schwarz, where he steals a leaf blower and causes chaos while trying to catch the Smurfs. He is arrested and jailed, but manages to escape with the aid of a swarm of flies. Papa uses a toy telescope to calculate the night he and the others can return home, but needs to work out a spell first. The Smurfs visit an antique store to look for a spellbook and find L’Histoire des Schtroumpfs by researcher Peyo, which contains a spell that can turn the moon blue. Gargamel tracks them down in the store, where he finds the dragon wand from Papa's vision and transfers his magic into it to use it against the Smurfs. Papa entrusts the spell to Brainy and voluntarily stays behind to be captured by Gargamel. After Clumsy convinces the others to rescue Papa, the Smurfs and Patrick travel to Belvedere Castle at Central Park, where Gargamel increases his wand's power with Papa's essence. Brainy successfully turns the moon blue and opens a portal to their world, from where he summons all the Smurfs of Smurf Village. While the Smurfs battle Gargamel, Smurfette and Patrick save Papa. Gutsy steals the dragon wand, but drops it in the process. Clumsy catches it and sends Gargamel flying away. The Smurfs bid Patrick and Grace farewell and return to Smurf Village. During the credits, Patrick and Grace have a baby boy, whom they name Blue, and the Smurfs rebuild their village in the style of New York. ==Cast==

• Hank Azaria as Gargamel, the arch-nemesis of the Smurfs who plots to use the Smurfs as part of a spell that would turn lead into gold. As opposed to the television show where Gargamel's goal is to use the Smurfs as the key ingredient in an alchemical formula to create the gold or eat them or destroy them, in the film he wants to capture them to serve as charms, "whose mystical essence will make his inept magic more powerful — and dangerous". Welker provided the voice of Hefty Smurf and other characters in the 1980s cartoon series. Four orange tabby cats played the role of Azrael with some scenes being created with CGI by Tippett Studio. Animal trainer Larry Madrid had a "rare Burma cat" that was used to educe snarls from the other cats since they did not like him. • Tim Gunn as Henri, Odile's assistant at Anjelou Cosmetics. Joan Rivers, Liz Smith, Tom Colicchio, Olivia Palermo, and Michael Musto make cameos in the film at a fictional Anjelou cosmetics product launch. ==Production==

Development In 1997, producer Jordan Kerner sent the first "of a series of letters" to The Smurfs licensing agent Lafig Belgium expressing interest in making a feature film. It was not until 2002 after a draft of Kerner's film adaptation of ''Charlotte's Web'' was read by Peyo's heirs, that they accepted Kerner's offer. Peyo's daughter Véronique Culliford and family had wanted to make a Smurfs film for years and said that Kerner was the first person to pitch a film that shared their "vision and enthusiasm". principal photography began in New York City on March 26, 2010. In order to help the Smurfs' animators during post-production, cinematographer Phil Meheux and his team would light up a scene where the Smurfs would be digitally added using 7 and one half-inch tall models to stand in during set-up and rehearsals. He explained, "We can then position the light so that it falls right. The actors know where the Smurf will be when it is animated later, so their eyelines will match. Then we can take out the model and shoot the scene, and they look quite real, fitting the real backing that we're giving them. It looks like they're part of the surroundings". Also during the process the Imageworks visual effects team used a new camera system to precisely record the on-set lighting, so it could be applied later in the computer. When time came to film a scene that would include actors and Smurfs, each Smurf was represented by a different colored dot and the actors had to remember which dot was which Smurf. The Smurfs characters were created during post-production by 268 Sony Pictures Imageworks employees who spent around 358,000 hours animating. Character designer Allen Battino, a long time Kerner collaborator, was brought in to redesign the characters for CGI. == Marketing ==

Harper's Bazaar Using a 'cross-promotional' marketing tactic, fashion journalist Laura Brown and CGI graphics supervisor J.J. Blumenkranz collaborated on the fall accessories spread of the August 2011 edition of the Harper Bazaar. This was chosen with the model of Smurfette of whom was styled with accessories from designer fashion brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Lanvin. The section titled: Smurfette Style: Accessories That Pop, stated that instead of 'feeling blue' costumers should 'make like Smurfette and step out in the hottest fall accessories.' Photography was completed by Jeffery Westbrook. With the publishing of the digital article, a link to see an exclusive preview was provided. ==Release==

residents painted their entire village in blue The film had its worldwide premiere on June 16, 2011, in Júzcar, a small village in Spain. To celebrate the release, the residents painted the entire village, including the church and other historical buildings, in blue. Twelve local painters used 4,000 litres of blue to transform the traditionally white Júzcar into the world's first Smurf Village. The Japanese version of the film uses Hey! Say! JUMP's "Magic Power" as its theme song. A couple of the singers were voice actors in the Japanese dub. In the United States, the film was meant to be released on December 17, 2010, but it was delayed to July 29, 2011. In April 2021, Sony signed a deal giving Disney access to their legacy content to stream on Disney+ and Hulu and appear on Disney's linear television networks. Disney's access to Sony's titles would come following their availability on Netflix. ==Reception==

Box office The Smurfs grossed $142.6 million in the United States and Canada, along with $421.1 million in foreign markets, for a worldwide total of $563.7 million. It was the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2011. Documents from the Sony Pictures hack revealed the film turned a profit of $83 million. It was Sony Pictures Animation's highest-grossing film until it was surpassed by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in 2023. The film opened on approximately 5,300 screens at 3,395 locations, However, actual figures showed Cowboys & Aliens won the weekend with $36.4 million just beating The Smurfs $35.6 million. The Smurfs opening was still stronger than anticipated since some box office analysts predicted that it would open below $30 million. For its second weekend the film remained at number two with Rise of the Planet of the Apes taking Cowboys & Aliens spot. On its second weekend it expanded to 42 territories, taking first place in most of its markets and grossing $45.2 million. Among the markets the film opened in first place were Brazil ($6.65 million), France ($5.93 million), Mexico ($5.53 million) Germany ($5.43 million). Critical reception Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 21% of 119 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 4/10. The site's critical consensus states, "The Smurfs assembles an undeniably talented cast of voice actors and live-action stars—then crushes them beneath a blue mound of lowest-common-denominator kiddie fare." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gave the film an average score of 30 based on 22 reviews, which indicates "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. • Favorite Movie (Nominated) • Favorite Movie Actress: Sofia Vergara (Nominated) • Favorite Voice in an Animated Film: Katy Perry (Won) ==Video games==

• The Smurfs, a Nintendo DS video game was released on July 19, 2011. • The Smurfs Dance Party, a Wii video game was released on July 19, 2011. ==Sequels==

The Smurfs 2 A sequel, titled The Smurfs 2, was released on July 31, 2013. Director Raja Gosnell and producer Jordan Kerner returned, along with all the main cast. New cast includes Christina Ricci, J. B. Smoove, and Brendan Gleeson. In the sequel, Gargamel creates a couple of evil Smurf-like creatures called the Naughties to harness the magical Smurf-essence. When he discovers that only a real Smurf can give him what he wants and that only Smurfette can turn the Naughties into the real Smurfs, Gargamel kidnaps Smurfette and takes her to Paris. Papa, Clumsy, Grouchy, and Vanity return to the human world and seek the help of their friends Patrick and Grace Winslow to rescue Smurfette from Gargamel. Like its predecessor, The Smurfs 2 was met with critically negative reviews, and grossing $347 million worldwide against a $105 million budget. Cancelled third film and revivals On May 10, 2012, two weeks after Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation announced production of The Smurfs 2, Variety reported that writers Karey Kirkpatrick and Chris Poche were developing a script for The Smurfs 3, which was set for release on July 24, 2015, and later rescheduled for August 14, 2015. In March 2014, Sony announced that it will reboot the series with a completely computer-animated film. Directed by Kelly Asbury, the first reboot titled Smurfs: The Lost Village, was released on April 7, 2017, which received mixed reviews from critics, but was considered an improvement over the live-action films. On February 7, 2022, it was reported that LAFIG Belgium and IMPS (now known as Peyo Company), the owners of the Smurfs brand, had agreed to a partnership with Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Movies to produce multiple animated Smurfs films, with the second reboot being an animated musical film. Pam Brady is set to write the screenplay, with production set to begin later that year for a release on December 20, 2024. On June 14, 2022, it was announced that former DreamWorks Animation veteran Chris Miller would direct the musical film. In August, it was delayed to February 14, 2025, with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 taking its previous release date. On April 27, 2023, at CinemaCon, it was announced that Barbadian singer Rihanna would be voicing Smurfette, as well as producing the film along with writing and recording original songs for the movie. The title was reported to be The Smurfs Movie. Later, it was renamed as The Smurfs Musical. The title was officially revealed as The Smurfs Movie during CinemaCon in April 2024, alongside Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, JP Karliak, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Nick Kroll, James Corden, Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddingham, Sandra Oh, Alex Winter, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña, Kurt Russell, and John Goodman joining the voice cast. On October 4, 2024, the film's release date was delayed to July 18, 2025. ==Notes==