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No Name (James Corden) and Smurfette (Rihanna) in Smurfs from Paramount Animation.

When Papa Smurf (John Goodman) is mysteriously taken by evil wizards, Razamel and Gargamel, Smurfette (Rihanna) leads the Smurfs on a mission into the real world to save him. With the help of new friends, the Smurfs must discover what defines their destiny to save the universe.

Smurfs features an all-star voice cast including Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman, Jp Karliak, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña with Kurt Russell and John Goodman.

The Smurf movies have been a hit with audiences. The first Smurfs movie was the most commercially successful, grossing over half a billion dollars worldwide. The totals for the live-action films are, The Smurfs (2011) $563,749,323 and The Smurfs 2 (2013): $347,434,178, while the animated films brought in respectively The Smurfs and the Magic Flute...

The Smurfs global license holder Imps has announced it is rebranding as Peyo Company after the pen name of Belgian comic book artist Peyo, who created the iconic little blue creatures in the late 1950s.

The company also revealed it is embarking on a new strategy to expand The Smurfs franchise and revive other original creations from Peyo’s ‘Johan & Peewit’ and ‘Benny Breakiron’ comic books.

Set against the backdrop of Medieval Europe, the Johan & Peewit comic strip series was first published in 1946, and eventually generated 13 separate albums.

Peyo first introduced the Smurfs in a Johan & Peewit story called The Smurfs & the Magic Flute in 1958. Readers loved the characters so much that Peyo decided to create a spin-off dedicated to their adventures.

Benny Breakiron (Benoît Brisefer) was launched in 1960, about revolves around an outwardly normal little boy with secret superhuman strength.

Johan & Peewit

Imps announced its name change and...

“Tra-la-lalala”A simple tune that quickly transformed into an earwig which burrowed into the brains of a generation (“Generation X” to be more precise). Yes, it’s the rallying song of that big, blue behemoth of kid-friendly franchises, the Smurfs. Those petite (three apples high) magical imps were introduced by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (Aka Pierre Colliford) way, way back in 1958. They were a merchandising phenom in Europe, but didn’t truly achieve worldwide superstar status until they descended on the Us thanks to TV cartoon titans Bill Hanna and Joe Barbara (the creators of The Flintstones and Scooby Doo also co-wrote that too-catchy theme song with Hoyt Curtin) and became the anchor for NBC’s Saturday morning line-up in 1981 through 1989. Tons of toys and imitations (remember the Snorks?) followed, but things were quiet in their hidden spot in the magic forest for the next twenty years or so. And then...

When it comes to movies about the Belgian cartoonist Peyo’s diminutive, liberty-cap-wearing, blue-skinned Schtroumpfs (or Smurfs, as well call them), being “good enough” means exceeding all expectations. Their first, Peyo-directed cinematic outing, released in this country as The Smurfs And The Magic Flute, is notable only for a song score that The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg’s Michel Legrand seemed to have composed in the midst of a mental breakdown; the decades-later attempts to turn the mushroom-dwelling humanoids into a Hollywood live-action franchise, in The Smurfs and The Smurfs 2, are simply dire. But now comes Smurfs: The Lost Village, an inoffensive children’s film with an above-average voice cast, competent animation, and no product placement. This is enough to make it the finest film ever made about the Smurfs.

Fans of the recently rereleased Donnie Darko may recall that the Smurfs, though nominally male, are completely asexual, and...

As a pop culture enterprise, the Smurfs don’t get much respect nowadays, but they have noble roots. Created by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo, they originated in the fifties as supporting characters in one of the adventures of the Medieval page Johan (a story later retitled The Smurfs and the Magic Flute). Though not quite as popular or as long-lived as Asterix or Tintin, Johan and his sidekick Pewit (or Pirlout) were the heroes of a well-known, fairly literate swashbuckling comic series that was popular for generations across Europe. The reason I mention this is because growing up in Turkey I was a pretty big fan of the Johan books, and when we moved to the U.S., I was shocked to discover that most of these stories hadn’t been translated into English. But the Smurfs — those weird little blue dudes from the Magic Flute story — were everywhere! Imagine...