By Matthew B. Zeidman for Hollywood Today

 

HOLLYWOOD, CA (RUSHPRNEWS) 6/11/08 – Following in the footsteps of another popular cartoon show of the 1980s, “Transformers,” “The Smurfs” will be adapted into a live-action film full of accompanying CGI animation. Columbia Pictures announced the project Tuesday and is courting animation veterans David Stem and David Weiss to pen the script.

 

Beginning as a Belgian comic strip in 1958, “The Smurfs” made the jump to the American small screen in 1981, when Hanna-Barbera produced an animated series for NBC that lasted for 9 years.

 

The eponymous characters were diminutive blue forest creatures who lived in toadstools, sang merrily and did their best to avoid being eaten by the local scheming wizard and his cat. The Smurfs were almost exclusively male (only three female villagers were ever introduced in the fictional universe) and enjoyed using the word “Smurf” as a catchall noun, verb, adjective and adverb.

 

In 2005, a UNICEF commercial aired in Belgium featuring the Smurfs’ village being decimated by warplanes. The officially sanctioned advertisement was meant to promote the rehabilitation of child soldiers in former Belgian colonies in Africa.

 

In addition to “Transformers,” other classic cartoon adaptations to mix live action and animation in recent years have included “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Fat Albert” and “Space

 

 

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