The Smurfs and The Magic Flute - Production and Release

Production and Release

Peyo, the creator of the Smurfs, oversaw the production of La Flûte à six schtroumpfs at Brussels' Belvision in 1975. The film was based on Peyo's comic album of the same name, and the ninth to feature his duo of characters, Johan and Peewit. The music score was written by Michel Legrand, a recent Oscar winner for Summer of '42 and the original Thomas Crown Affair. It was released a year later in its native Belgium, and in some European territories subsequently. A book adaptation of the film, by Anthea Bell, was published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton in 1979 (ISBN 0-340-24068-7).

It was not until the success of Hanna-Barbera's Smurfs cartoon that Flute began to gain widespread attention: in the early 1980s, Stuart R. Ross, head of First Performance Pictures Corporation, acquired the American rights to the film for US$1,000,000. In doing so, he sold those rights to Tribune Entertainment (television), Vestron Video (home video), and Atlantic Releasing (theatrical).

The English dubbing for the movie was not provided by the Hanna-Barbera cast members, but by non-union talent who were contributing at the time to American versions of imported anime. John Rust, the director of this dub, appeared as one of the voices.

The North American release of Flute, courtesy of Ross' First Performance and Atlantic, grossed US$11 million out of a maximum 432 venues, the highest on record for a non-Disney production until The Care Bears Movie in 1985, and was among Atlantic's all-time top five movies at the box office. Thanks to its success, Atlantic released several more animated features, many of which were distributed by their short-lived children's subsidiary, Clubhouse Pictures.

The theatrical poster for the film boasted, "It's the Smurfs' ONE and ONLY full length motion picture...ever!" Prior to Flute, however, a black-and-white compilation feature, Les Aventures des Schtroumpfs, was released in Belgium in the mid-1960s, and had been forgotten by the time this film debuted in the US (1983).

The film features Papa Smurf, Brainy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Hefty Smurf (named "Strong-man Smurf" in one of the English dubs) Handy Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Greedy Smurf (named "sweetie" in one of the English dubs), Poet Smurf, Farmer Smurf, and a new character, Festive Smurf ("Actor Smurf" in different dub) – who loved to sing, dance and whose priority was wanting to have a party.

However, unlike the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, all the Smurfs (with the exception of Papa Smurf, Grouchy Smurf and Brainy Smurf) look alike and don't have their trademark attributes, just like in the original comic book series. The humor is also closer to the one from the comic books. Rather than being symbolically thrown away, Brainy Smurf is constantly being whacked with a hammer by other Smurfs simply for talking too much.

The characters of Gargamel, Azrael and Smurfette are not present in the film.

The UK dub is different than the American version. Many of the names are wrong (for example, Johan and Peewit's names become John and William, respectively), and several Smurfs are called by the wrong names.

The film was originally released on VHS and laserdisc in September 1984 by the aforementioned Vestron Video, and reissued later in the decade by the discount Video Treasures and Avid Home Entertainment labels.

A DVD version was released by Morningstar Entertainment in 2008; it was later re-released by Shout! Factory on August 14, 2012. The film was also released to DVD in Canada by Vivendi Entertainment on November 22, 2011. It Is The UK Dub that is Avaiable on DVD.

The film was released to both DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK on October 11, 2010.

For reasons unknown, the Netflix service in America currently streams the UK dub.