Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with Smurfs director Chris Miller.

Smurfs takes fans back to the beginning, as the Smurf Village sets out on an exciting adventure to the real world to rescue Papa Smurf.

Miller discusses collaborating with Rihanna and Roc Nation on the soundtrack and Smurfette’s design, casting massive stars like John Goodman and Kurt Russell, and so much more.

Not only is Chris Miller the voice of some of your favorite DreamWorks characters, the storyboard artist and filmmaker also directed Shrek the Third and Puss in Boots before landing this “strange and weird and wonderful” A-list retelling of Smurfs. Like many kids’ movies in recent years, Smurfs attracted an impressive roster of talent to voice the iconic creatures, right down to bringing nine-time Grammy Award-winning artist Rihanna back to the music scene. In addition to working on the soundtrack with Roc Nation, Rihanna served as a producer and provided her “otherworldly” vocal talents to Smurfette, who leads the charge on this mission. There have been a number of reimaginings and adaptations of the ’80s series, but Miller’s Smurfs is a take that “should and will stand on its own.” The movie takes fans back to the beginning, and when Papa Smurf (John Goodman) is taken by the evil wizards, Razamel and Gargamel (J.P. Karliak), it’s up to Smurfette and the village to save him. The Smurfs cast is rounded out by the likes of Kurt Russell, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Natasha Lyonne, Octavia Spencer, and so many more. While talking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Miller let us in on the secret behind getting such a rock-star cast, complete with late-night cameos and more.
Chris Miller Looks Back on His ‘Liquid Television’ Days

“What did I just see?”

Image via MTV

COLLIDER: I always research everyone before I speak to them, and while researching, I was fascinated to learn that you worked on Liquid Television. CHRIS MILLER: Oh my gosh, yeah! Dude. They ran a short of mine. That’s what I was gonna say. I read that you directed a short. The thing that I found fascinating is that Liquid Television was so far ahead of the curve, and it lasted for, like, a minute. What do you remember about that, and why do you think it didn’t last more than that? It was a cool idea. MILLER: Why was it just sort of this bottle rocket? That’s an awesome question. Because you’re right. I was in college, and there was this late-night show that just played the craziest animation. I’d see stuff that I wouldn’t see anywhere else. Unless I happened to see a Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation, it just wasn’t available. And why wasn’t it sustainable? I have no idea. No idea. How long was it around? I want to say a year or two. It was nothing. MILLER: Right. And I just happened to intersect with it. Timing, right? It’s just disappointing because that was in ‘92 or something. Right now, you have, like, Tim Miller’s Love Death + Robots, but that’s different. Liquid Television was very punk rock. MILLER: Totally. There was a rawness to it and an immediacy to it. It was always like, “What did I just see? Will I ever see that again?”

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I also wonder if maybe it was the infrastructure of getting good shorts all the time. MILLER: Exactly. It was harder to come by. Where were they coming from? I went to CalArts. I have a feeling a lot came from collegiate sort of films, shorts, Canadian work and French. You’re right: small pool when you get right down to it. I love animated feature films, but I think there’s so much room for animation to explode, and there’s just not enough pipelines for people to do it. MILLER: It’s challenging, but there are definitely ways for people to get their work out there. It’s an interesting time. Well, you can get it out on YouTube and just release it. The problem is finding people to help champion it to the next level. When you put together something like Liquid Television, or something on TV, you’re cherry picking, like, “These are worth your time.” MILLER: Right. It’s not shooting a million things out of hand and you might happen to catch something. It’s a good question. Like you said, there’s such an opportunity. You can produce your own movie. The reason my show was on Liquid Television was because, actually, Mike and Spike helped me finish it, ink and paint it. That’s how I had something that was even complete. Now, anyone can make something, but it’s like you’re saying, what’s that vehicle? How do you break through? At Collider, people send me short films all the time or movies that they want me to watch, and I don’t have enough time to do my normal job. How do I know what’s worth pushing play on when I have so much being sent? It’s really difficult.
What Was Rihanna’s Involvement in ‘Smurfs’?

“She’s just hyper-specific about how she’s going to deliver something.”

So, originally this was going to be called The Smurfs Musical. You eventually went with Smurfs. I know this is a studio decision. At any point, did people say, “We have a lot of movies named Smurfs. Do we want to call this something else?” As a webmaster, having the title Smurfs is difficult unless you put in Smurfs 2025. MILLER: That’s true. We just dropped “the” because “the” was on Sony Pictures’. There were many different titles for this film, and we landed on that, like, “Just make it Smurfs,” so we can present it as if this is the first one. This is a first take on something. This is something that should and will stand on its own. It’s like Chad [Stahleski]’s going to do Highlander, and I think they’re going to call it Highlander. I’m like, “What the f are you doing?” MILLER: He should call it The Highlander. [Laughs] Anything. One of the things that a lot of people are excited about is Rihanna’s involvement. It’s a really big deal to a lot of people because she is very, very popular and beloved by a lot of people. I heard there are multiple songs, and then I heard there’s one song. What was that like collaborating with her? MILLER: It is multiple. It’s two songs, one that really, really lives in the body of the movie and one towards the end of the film. Her ability to produce, her team, the Roc Nation team, really took the reins of creating the music and zeroing in on the musical style for the film when it came to the songs. Henry Jackman is our composer, so Henry crushed the score. But it’s about two. Gosh, it was a long journey to find that music, and a lot of writers’ rooms for musicians, and zeroing in on certain sounds. Going back to Rihanna, she’s just hyper-specific about how she’s going to deliver something when she finds the music that she wants. The collaboration, of course, is storytelling. We’re all making a movie, so it’s under that guise. It’s then her taking that and making sure this is not going to be a cookie-cutter, standardized version of a ballad, for instance, that you see in an animated movie. She took her time with it and found it. Amazing group. Amazing. Then, beyond the music, her voice quality, just the quality of her speaking voice, is fantastic. It’s got a little bit of a smokiness to it. She’s a natural performer, and she’s funny. Then, when she sings, it becomes something otherworldly.

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Also, she’s a producer. Is this one of these things where she was really there and involved? I know some producers who have a title, and they’re not doing very much, and some producers are in the mix. MILLER: It’s different on every picture. Of course, every picture can be like, “How many producers are on this movie?” 100%. MILLER: Early on, art development really kept her involved and up to date, especially on Smurfette. Smurfette’s very much based on the Peyo design, but there are just some subtle changes that we found, and it took a long time. It took collaboration with her and conversation with her. It’s particularly with their hair. We tried a lot of different things just to find, “What can we do to Smurfette to make it feel more like her character as well?” It was funny, honestly, it was about a year where we went around and we tried everything that we could. We ended up both, at the same time, pretty much, landing back at exactly our starting point, like, “Oh, no, this should be the original. Let’s tweak this a little bit and this a little bit.” That was her involvement, that sort of artistic visual collaborative way. She’s all about her performance.

Image via Paramount Pictures

One of the things about this film and [The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants] is that they both do live-action. They’re both going into the real world. I should point out that Tron: Ares is also going in the real world, bringing their vehicles and characters. What does it say that 2025 animated worlds or CGI world are coming into the real world? MILLER: “What can we do with these animated characters?” [Laughs] For Smurfs, it helps just broaden the story visually, it offered an opportunity to make it bigger. It’s a rescue mission to get Papa Smurf back, who’s been abducted by this alliance of evil wizards, and so they’ve got to leave the safe confines of Smurf Village. That’s the color palette that we created there, which is very warm but lush, and live action instantly offered an opportunity, of, like, you’re thrown in the middle of a city and this is nothing like you’ve ever seen before. To them, it’s like going to another planet, right? The challenge there is to visually make sure the Smurfs still look like the Smurfs and not like they’re pasted. They’re integrated into this world. That was really one of the main driving reasons, and then the movie gets very bonkers in the third act. There’s a whole dimensional thing and a lot of different styles of animation, actually, that we tackle later on. There are all kinds of different interpretations of Smurfs in Act Three. Interesting. MILLER: It’s all sort of ballooning out.
‘Smurfs’ Cast All Have a Connection to This “Strange and Weird” World

From Rihanna, to Nick Offerman, to Jimmy Kimmel, this movie is packed with stars.

I know Nick Offerman plays Ken. Is Ken just live action, or is Ken animated? MILLER: Ken is the brother of Papa Smurf, and that’s John Goodman. They had a falling out. This is all part of this big, Smurf family secret that gets revealed. Yeah. That’s the origin story part of the of the movie. It’s like, “Oh, that’s where they came from. That’s why they ended up in that forest. That’s why that little magical village exists.” But they had a falling out. They’re brothers and they were protectors of the universe on a grander scale. Smurfs had a sort of higher calling to help maintain the balance of peace. You’re setting it up at the beginning. MILLER: That’s right. It’s teased out right there. They face some trauma in this movie, without giving it away, and it creates a falling out there, a split. So, Nick Offerman is playing Ken, who’s gone off on his own. Pop has been abducted. They need the brother to help get the other brother back. You actually have a crazy cast. MILLER: It’s bonkers.

Who is Jimmy Kimmel play/voice? Was everyone sort of jumping at it because they all have kids? MILLER: Jimmy’s got a cameo. So he plays himself? MILLER: No. He doesn’t play himself. It’s a small role. Let me just put it that way. I mentioned the dimensions; that’s where he appears. I’ll tease it out that way. It was fun. He came in, and he just wanted to do it. The opportunity came up, and he jumped at it. But you mentioned everyone having kids, which, by the way, most of the time, that is how movies are cast. It’s amazing how much talent you can get when children are around or they’ve just arrived recently. But in the case of this movie, across the board, including Nick Offerman, everyone had some strange, nostalgic tie to the Smurfs. Nick was like, “The Smurfs meant a lot to me when I was a young kid.” It was always a story like that from every single actor, like, “Oh, yeah, I loved that show in the ‘80s.” “Yeah, I had those comic books.” It was a lot of that Hanna-Barbera, a lot of connection to the ‘80s show, and everyone just going, “It was a strange and weird and wonderful thing.” That’s Rihanna’s connection, too, by the way. Also, you look at how many people are in this movie that are name people that my mom would know. It’s a long list of people. MILLER: It was a lot of voice sessions. It’s actually great for you because they can go on talk shows and promote. MILLER: That’s true. There aren’t enough talk shows. The cast is too big.
Chris Miller Is Bringing More Nostalgic Properties Back to the Screen

“That thing needs a reinvention.”

After this, are you already thinking about other things? What do you have your hands in? MILLER: Right now, breathing. [Laughs] That’s number one. I’m looking forward to seeing how this picture does. There are some other projects. I can’t mention what, but I will say this, they’re older properties that are like, “That one needs to come back. That thing needs a reinvention.” There’s lots going on, at least I hope. A lot of video games, like The Last of Us, have remastered the original game with modern video game graphics. I’m going to use Ratatouille as an example. Ratatouille is perfect as it is, but for a new generation, what are your thoughts on remastering a classic animated movie with modern VFX? Are you against it? Do you like the idea? What are your thoughts? MILLER: I’m open to it. I’d have to see it. I know I’m giving you the vaguest answer. I find it intriguing, but it depends on what it is. Let me ask you a question. When you mentioned Ratatouille, what are you referencing? I watched Elio the other day, and the animation is breathtaking. What you can do now with visual effects in animation is crazy. Take the original Toy Story, great story… MILLER: This is what I would say then: leave it alone. Leave Toy Story alone. That’s what I would say. Now I totally get your question. If you want to make a new Toy Story with new fancy technology, go for it. Otherwise, that film lives exactly how it should. To me, it’s a time stamp. Smurfs opens in theaters on July 18.

Smurfs

Release Date

July 18, 2025

Director

Matthew Landon, Chris Miller

Writers

Pam Brady, Peyo

Producers

Ryan Harris