Fans of Sony’s CG take on Peyo’s little blue heroes The Smurfs are in for a holiday treat this year as Sony Pictures Animation preps The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol for Cartoon Network! Taking cues from the Dickensian classic, the special—directed by Troy Quane–will premiere December 5 at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT. And we feel obliged to remind you that things will get even Smurfier next year with Raja Gosnell’s The Smurfs 2 set for July 31, 2013.
Sony’s Animation and Imageworks divisions are also celebrating a healthy helping of Annie Award nominations, announced yesterday (see our previous story for complete nominations info).
Leading the pack is Genndy Tartakovsky’s feature directorial debut Hotel Transylvania with 8 nods (Best Animated Feature, Direction [Tartakovsky], Music [Mark Motherbaugh], Production Design [Marcelo Vignali], Voice Acting [Adam Sandler], Editorial [Catherine Apple] and twice for Character Design [Carlos Grangel, Carter Goodrich]). Tartakovsky’s hand-drawn Goodnight, Mr. Foot also received a nomination for Best Animated Short Subject. Sony/Aardman’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits nabbed 5 (Best Animated Feature, Animation [Will Becher], Production Design [Norman Garwood, Matt Berry], Voice Acting [Imelda Staunton] and Writing [Gideon Defoe]). Imageworks was recognized for its vfx work on The Amazing Spider-Man (Effects [Stephen Marshall, Joseph Pepper, Dustin Wicke] and Animation [Mike Beaulieu, Roger Vizard, Atsushi Sato, Jackie Koehler, Derek Esparza, Richard Smith, Max Tyrie]).
