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WIRE Buzz: New Smurfs Cartoon, MGM Finds 'Lost Sun,' New Regular on 'Legends of Tomorrow'
The Smurfs will be coming to Nickelodeon in a new CG-animated series sometime in 2021, followed by a truckload of new merchandise in 2022. The show will be written by Peter Saisselin and Amy Serafin, the team behind Sonic Boom and Alvin!!! and The Chipmunks, and directed by William Renaud (Calimero, Casper's Scare School).
Lest you forget, these little blue rascals were the brainchild of Belgian comic artist Peyo back in 1958 for his strip Johan et Pirlouit, and they were originally known as Les Schtroumphs, a word Peyo invented while brainfarting on the word "salt." In Spanish, they're called Pitufos, just so you know.
They had animated shorts in the 1960s, a feature film in 1976, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon and a breakfast cereal in the 1980s, a pair of live-action films in the 2010s, a music career spanning decades and a figurine collection that remains popular in Belgium and Germany. These Schtroumphs are proven money-makers.
Shayan Sobhian has gotten the call-up to series regular on DC's Legends of Tomorrow on The CW for Season 6, TVLine.com reports.
Sobhian, who plays Behrad Terazi based on the DC Comics character Osiris, joined at the end of Season 4 and became a recurring character in Season 5 in a way showrunner Phil Klemmer really liked. Behrad is a wielder of the Air Totem with his sister Zari (Tala Ashe), or, rather, Zari 2.0, because she is a different version of herself thanks to timeline shenanigans that one would really have to watch the show to be able to follow.
Klemmer is looking forward to letting Sobhian and Ashe loose to establish their brother/sister dynamic. "I want some bickering siblings on this show," he told Entertainment Weekly. "That was the promise of bringing Behrad onto the show. We haven't given them a chance to just exist as co-equal adult siblings, and that's really fascinating to me — like how people bring their baggage from their childhood. I just want to get them to that neutral space and see how they deal with sharing a totem. You know, figure out what version of Wonder Twin powers are."
However, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, who plays Charlie, will not be returning for Season 6, which follows the mid-season departure of original cast member Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer) and his partner Courtney Ford (Nora Darhk).
A film to keep an eye on: MGM has picked up a script called Lost Sun, from rookie screenwriter Peter Barnes, to be produced by Jonathan Glickman and Sukee Chew.
This is the first new project Glickman has taken on since he stepped down from the post of MGM president back in January to focus on producing. He's previously produced Grosse Pointe Blank and the Rush Hour films, among others, and as MGM president he oversaw two James Bond films in Skyfall and Spectre, as well as two Creed films.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film will tell the tale of what would happen to the world if the sun just stopped rising one morning. A blind woman must navigate the ensuing human chaos to save her son, and in the process she learns some horrifying truths about her family. Certainly an eye-catching high concept.
