Merrick here...


Columbia Pictures & Sony Animation are gonna bring us a SMURF movie (insert disparaging comments here).

Best known in the United States for the long-running Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the Smurfs were created in 1958 by Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, known throughout the world as Peyo. The Smurfs, originally called "Les Schtroumpfs" in French, were created for a Belgian series of comic books, first as minor characters. The villagers, known for their blue skin and small statures, spawned a line of statuettes, games, toys, theme parks and a hit TV series, which ran as part of NBC's Saturday-morning lineup from 1981-90.

...says THIS ARTICLE in Variety.

One of the producers on the project is Jordan Kerner, whose been working for a while to bring these little blue bastards to the screen. A few years back, Kerner was a key player in an attempted revival of STAR TREK - which was actually scripted by BAND OF BROTHERS writer Erik Jendresen. You can read my write-up of his odd-but-interesting TREK script HERE.