A WHOLE NEW WORLD AWAITS IN “SMURFS: THE LOST VILLAGE”

Press release

Columbia Pictures Animation's Smurfs: The Lost Village, the fully animated, all-new take on the Smurfs, a 

mysterious map sets Smurfette and her best friends Brainy, Clumsy and Hefty on an exciting and thrilling race 

through the Forbidden Forest filled with magical creatures to find a mysterious lost village before the evil wizard 

Gargamel does. Embarking on a rollercoaster journey full of action and danger, the Smurfs are on a course that 

leads to the discovery of the biggest secret in Smurf history!

Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

Featuring the voices of Demi Lovato, Rainn Wilson, Joe Manganiello, Jack McBrayer, Danny Pudi, Michelle 

Rodriguez, Ellie Kemper, Ariel Winter, with Mandy Patinkin and Julia Roberts. Directed by Kelly Asbury. Produced 

by Jordan Kerner and Mary Ellen Bauder Andrews. Written by Stacey Harman and Pamela Ribon. Based on the 

characters and works of Peyo. Executive producers are Raja Gosnell and Ben Waisbren. Music by Christopher 

Lennertz. Imagery and Animation by Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. Featuring “I’m a Lady” performed by 

Meghan Trainor.

For Smurfs: The Lost Village, the filmmakers went back to the drawing board to rediscover the classic, magical

 look of the Smurfs. “We went through the early comic books and studied the work of Peyo to try to find a visual 

look for the movie that honored the origins of the Smurfs and how they really look,” says Kelly Asbury, the film’s 

director. Asbury previously directed the hits Shrek 2 and Gnomeo and Juliet. “That was important to how we 

conceived each location, the look, the design of the Smurfs themselves, their mushroom houses, the colors.”

The film is loaded with fun as the filmmakers take the Smurfs into the vibrant, exciting, and dangerous world of 

the Forbidden Forest. “It’s a land they’ve never experienced before – it’s beautiful but full of surprises, dangers, 

and fun,” says Asbury. “Dragonflies – real fire-breathing dragons that are fun and happy until you make them 

mad. Flowers that look and smell beautiful but will eat you if you’re not careful. Kissing plants that assault you 

with kisses.”

Asbury says that the familiar world of Smurf Village and the new worlds created for the film all have the same 

original inspiration: Peyo – the Belgian artist Pierre Culliford who created the Smurfs back in 1958.. “Peyo’s work 

has a buoyance and a lightness of being. There was an effortlessness to the way he drew,” Asbury explains. “For 

the Forbidden Forest and the Lost Village, we wanted it to feel like something that the audience was experiencing 

with the Smurfs for the first time, but it had to feel like a part of the Smurfs’ world. Darker colors, deeper colors

, rich shadows, lots of lush, unusual colored foliage, glow-in-the-dark plants, animals, bugs – all these things

 were different – but it had the Peyo shapes and language in common.”

The filmmakers also rethought the humor for the film. “We wanted adults and kids to laugh together at the 

humor, the way they do at the Peyo comics, rather than to have different kinds of jokes – double-entendre humor

 for the adults and something else for the kids,” says Asbury. “Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, 

Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges – everybody laughs at these types of gags and that kind of humor, and 

that’s what we tried to imbue into the movie –timeless with a new twist on it.”

Of course, as funny as the movie is, the Smurfs have always stood for the timeless ideas of harmony and peace, 

and that was not lost on the director. “The message of the movie is really one of teamwork,” says Asbury. “It 

takes a Smurf Village, if you will, individually and together, to bring everyone together to act as one. It’s about 

accepting each other’s differences and complementing each other for the greater good. I think that’s a universal 

message and one that is pertinent today.”

Opening across the Philippines on Friday, March 31, Smurfs: The Lost Village is distributed by Columbia Pictures, 

local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.