The Smurfs (2016 film)

The Smurfs is a 2016 American computer-animated musical fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, The Jim Henson Company, IMPS, LAFIG Belgium and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 55th Disney animated feature film, based on the comic series of the same name created by the Belgian comics artist Peyo, it was directed by Byron Howard and Garth Jennings, co-directed by Jared Bush (in his feature directorial debut) and Rich Moore, and produced by Clark Spencer and Brian Henson, from a screenplay written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, Bush and Phil Johnston, and a story by Howard, Bush, Jennings, Johnston, Pamela Ribon, Jim Reardon, Josie Trinidad, and Lee. The Smurfs must undergo adventures when the evil wizard Gargamel chases them from their beloved village to send them to our world, more precisely in the middle of a city where anthropomorphic mammals coexist. No taller than three apples, these blue beings must cross Zootopia, with a help of likely partnership a rabbit police officer, an optimistic koala and a red fox con artist in an attempt to find a way home before Gargamel finds them and to prevent his theater from entering foreclosure, as well as how the competition interferes with the personal lives of its contestants.

The Smurfs first screened during the Toronto International Film Festival on December 25, 2015, followed by its premiered at the Brussels Animation Film Festival in Belgium on February 13, 2016, and went into general theatrical release in Disney Digital 3-D, RealD 3D, IMAX 3D, and 4DX formats in the United States on March 4, 2016. The film received mixed reviews from critics, though audience reception was more positive. It has grossed over $1.056 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2016. The film earned numerous accolades; it was named one of the top ten best films of 2016 by the American Film Institute, and received Best Animated Feature at the 89th Academy Awards, among numerous other accolades. A sequel, titled The Smurfs 2, was released on November 24, 2021.

Humans and Mammals 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". To look the part of Gargamel, Azaria wore a prosthetic nose, ears, buck teeth, eyebrows, and a wig (to make the process easier, he shaved his head). The initial make-up test took three hours.
 * Ginnifer Goodwin as Judy Hopps, a young optimistic rabbit from Bunnyburrow and a newly appointed member of the Zootopia Police Department, assigned to the 1st Precinct, Nick's love interest.
 * Neil Patrick Harris as Buster Moon, an optimistic koala who plans to save his theater from closure by holding a singing competition, Judy and Nick friend.
 * Jason Bateman as Nick Wilde, a sly red fox who is a small-time con artist, Judy's love love interest.
 * Kath Soucie voices a young Nick Wilde.

Smurfs cast

 * Gary Oldman as Papa Smurf, the leader of the Smurfs. He and Frank Welker are the only original cast members from the TV series who returned for the film.
 * Katy Perry as Smurfette, the female of the Smurfs. About gaining the voice role, Perry said: "They had done a blind test where they took certain voices from previous interviews and matched them with the character. They liked my voice without even knowing who it was, and when they found out it was me, they thought that would work out. My personality was just a plus!"

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". Kerner soon began developing the 3-D CGI feature film with Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies. In 2006, Kerner said the film was planned to be a trilogy and would explain more of Gargamel's backstory. He stated, "We'll learn [more] about Gargamel and Smurf Soup and how all that began and what really goes on in that castle. What his backstory really was. There's an all-powerful wizard... there's all sorts of things that get revealed as we go along". The filmmakers were allowed to create three new Smurfs for the film – Narrator, Crazy, and Gutsy. Initially, Kerner explained, "He relished them as I do and suggested that it should be a live-action/CG film. However, early 2009 Kerner will not produced of the film and it the live-action/CG film was cancelled. In 2012, Plans for a first film were later scrapped, with a completely computer-animated reboot to be produced instead. Development of the film that would come to be called Zootopia began when Byron Howard pitched six-story ideas to Disney Animation chief creative officer and executive producer John Lasseter, of which three involved animal characters: an all-animal adaptation of The Three Musketeers, a 1960s-themed story about a "mad doctor cat...who turned children into animals", and a "bounty hunter pug in space". The common thread running through these ideas was that Howard wanted to do a film similar to Disney's Robin Hood, which also featured animals in anthropomorphic roles.

Pre-Production


In March 2013, it was announced that Brian Henson CEO of The Jim Henson Company acquires for produced the Smurfs film. In May 2013, The Hollywood Reporter initially reported that Howard was directing the film and that Jason Bateman had been cast, but little else about the film was known at the time. In June 2013, it was announed that Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios have signed an partnership with LAFIG Belgium and IMPS to produce multiple films based on The Smurfs comic series, with the first project being an animated musical film. The Smurfs was officially announced on August 10, 2013, at the D23 Expo, with a March 2016 release date.

Research for the film took place in Disney's Animal Kingdom, as well as in Kenya and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where animators spent eight months studying various animals' walk cycles as well as fur color. Eight hundred thousand forms of mammals were created for and featured in the film. To make the characters' fur even more realistic, they also went to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to closely observe the appearance of fur with a microscope under a variety of lighting. The filmmakers drew inspiration for Zootopia 's urban design from major cities including New York City, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Brasília.o develop a city that could actually be inhabited by talking mammals ranging in size from two inches (5.1 cm) to 27 feet (8.2 m) and from drastically different climates, the filmmakers consulted Americans with Disabilities Act specialists and HVAC system designers. To develop a city that could actually be inhabited by talking mammals ranging in size from two inches (5.1 cm) to 27 feet (8.2 m) and from drastically different climates, the filmmakers consulted Americans with Disabilities Act specialists and HVAC system designers. For assistance with designing motor vehicles appropriate for so many different types and sizes of mammals, the filmmakers consulted with J Mays, former chief creative officer of the Ford Motor Company. During the development process, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan F. Horn suggested that Nick should expressly state his disappointment ("Just when I thought someone actually believed in me...") after discovering that Judy still fears him as a predator. In March 2015, it was revealed that Garth Jennings (The Hitcchiker's Guide to the galaxy) had been added as a director of the film, in addition to Jared Bush (Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero), and Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph) as co-director.

Animation and Visual Effects
Disney's most recent work on animating fur was for the titular character of the 2008 film Bolt, but the software they had used at the time was not ready for creating the realistic fur of the animals of The Smurfs. Therefore, the studio's IT engineers developed the fur-controlling software "iGroom", which gave character designers precise control over the brushing, shaping and shading of fur and made it possible to create a variety of eccentric character styles for each animal. The software was also able to control an unseen "imaginary" under-layer that gave fur a degree of plushness not seen before. This feature was used to create characters like Officer Clawhauser, who has a big head that is entirely made of spotted fur. Characters with noteworthy numbers of strands of hair or fur included both of the two lead characters, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, who each had around 2.5 million hairs; a giraffe with nine million strands of fur; a gerbil with 480,000 strands; and a rodent with more strands of hair than the 400,000 that were on Elsa's head in Frozen.

The Smurfs was the second time Disney used the Hyperion renderer, which they had first used on Big Hero 6. A new fur paradigm was added to the renderer to facilitate the creation of realistic images of the animals' dense fur. Nitro, a real-time display application developed since the making of Wreck-It Ralph, was used to make the fur more consistent, intact and subtle much more quickly, as opposed to the previous practice of having to predict how the fur would work while making and looking at silhouettes or poses for the character. The tree-and-plant generator Bonsai, first used in Frozen, was used to make numerous variations of trees with very detailed foliage.

In order to help the Smurfs' animators during post-production, cinematographer Pablo Plaisted 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 Disney, and Henson collaborator, was brought in to redesign the characters for CGI.

The Smurfs was produced in makeshift quarters in a giant warehouse in North Hollywood (together with Moana) while Disney Animation's headquarters in Burbank was being renovated.

Casting
On January 14, 2014, Neil Patrick Harris was cast in the film's second lead voice role. On June 17, 2014, it was confirmed that Harris's character was named Buster and that Andy Samberg would voice Eddie, a sheep and Buster's best friend. In October 2014, it was announced that Ginnifer Goodwin was cast in the film's main lead voice role. On January 16, 2015, Gary Oldman was added to the cast of the animated adventure film to voice Papa Smurf. In Febraury 2015, it was announced that Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, Tori Kelly, Taron Egerton, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Don Lake, Bonnie Hunt, Jennifer Saunders, J. K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk and Shakira had joined the cast. On March 14, 2015, Katy Perry was revealed as the voice of Smurfette, and Hank Azaria as Gargamel. In April 2015, Frank Welker joined the cast as Gargamel's pet cat, Azarel. That same month, Chris Hemsworth, Keegan-Michael Key, Tom Holland, and David Cross was announced to playing as Gutsy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, and Brainy Smurf.

Music
The film's score is composed by Michael Giacchino, in his first feature-length project for Walt Disney Animation Studios, as he previously worked on several short films and television specials produced by the company, as well as multiple Pixar films. Recording took place from November 16–20, 2015, with an 80-piece orchestra conducted by Tim Simonec. In addition to her voice role of Gazelle, pop star Shakira also contributed an original song to the film titled "Try Everything", which was written by Sia and Stargate. The soundtrack was released on March 4, 2016, by Walt Disney Records.

Sequel
In June 2016, Howard and Jennings were in talks about the possibility of a The Smurfs sequel. In September 2016, Disney announced that a sequel to The Smurfs was in the works, and produced Brian Henson confirmed for the sequel. The film was originally scheduled for release on December 25, 2020, but the date was pushed back to July 2, 2021, accommodating the release of Like its predecessor, Soul. The Smurfs 2 's release date was further pushed back to November 24, 2021 and was met positive reviews and it earned $1.478 million.