Producer Jordan Kerner told the Moviehole.net Web site that his upcoming feature-film version of The Smurfs would be computer-animated. “It’s a 3-D/CG Smurfs,” Kerner told the site. “You just can’t make those guys live. It’d be a little weird. But a 3-D Shrek world of them?that’s fantastic.”Kerner says he has been researching the popular ’80s cartoon extensively. “Having seen all 234 episodes of the show numerous times, Herb Ratner and I have been working really hard at looking where all the holes were in the episodes. You know, like all of a sudden another woman appears?it’s not just Smurfette?and what we’ve done is we’ve plugged all those holes in a trilogy of three movies, and we reveal things as we go along.”

Kerner said it took five years to win the rights to the cult franchise. “They were very uncertain about what story we wanted to tell?we weren’t going to tell them until we had the rights, either. Then we got the rights on everyone’s faith that they also had an ability to veto and presented them with the treatment. They just loved it. To be told that they loved it?not just liked it?and to be told that [creator] Peyo would’ve loved it, is a huge blessing and a great thing to have happen.”

Among other things, the trilogy will examine Gargamel’s backstory. Audiences will learn more “about Gargamel and Smurf Soup and how all that began and what really goes on in that castle,” Kerner said. “What his backstory really was. There?s an all-powerful wizard. … There’s all sorts of things that get revealed as we go along.”