If you’ve been following the developments of the upcoming Smurfs movie, you know that it will be a combination of CGI animation and live-action, in a similar style to the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. It’ll be helmed by Raja Gosnell, the director of the Scooby Doo live-action movies.
As previously announced, Jonathan Winters will play Papa Smurf, Katy Perry will voice Smurfette, George Lopez will voice Grouchy, and Alan Cumming will play a new character, Gutsy Smurf.
On the live-action side, Neil Patrick Harris will play a Johan, an expectant father. Jayma Mays will be his pregnant wife. Hank Azaria will play the evil Gargamel and recently shaved his head for the role.
Now, Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin, Sofia Vergara (Modern Family), and Fred Armisen (Saturday Night Live) have joined the cast as well. Yelchin will voice Clumsy Smurf and Armisen will perform Brainy Smurf, the group’s know-it-all. Vergara will play Odile, Harris’ boss at high-end French cosmetics company.
Sony has released a plot synopsis and it sounds like, like The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Fat Albert before them, the moviemakers are incorporating the characters’ animated world into the movie.
Audiences everywhere are in for a Smurfy good time as the Smurfs make their first 3D trip to the big screen. When the evil wizard Gargamel chases the tiny blue Smurfs out of their village, they tumble from their magical world and into ours – in fact, smack dab in the middle of Central Park. Just three apples high and stuck in the Big Apple, the Smurfs must find a way to get back to their village before Gargamel tracks them down.
Filming is currently underway in New York’s Central Park. The Smurfs movie is set to hit theatres on August 3, 2011.
Good casting news. Now if they could just add some “black nerd” to the movie, they would be set! http://youtube.com/watch?v=OAvBMDcPfgw