Lots More Smurfs, Another Lucky Luke, and Even More Multimedia Asterix! Whoo-hoo!
New Lucky Luke
Due by year’s end, this is the latest book in the series from Achdé and Jul, and their eleventh together. Roughly translated, the title is “A Cowboy Under Pressure.”
It’s always a book to look forward to. Not much is known about it at this point , but that’s all right. I’d rather go in cold, anyway, though I’m sure more details about the plot will be revealed as we get closer to release day.
Asterix is Still Coming to Netflix! Also, the Silver Screen!
2024 is a busy publishing year for Asterix in celebrating the series’ 65th anniversary. We just saw the release of new editions of two classic Goscinny/Uderzo volumes: “Mansions of the Gods” and “Asterix in Belgium”! I know the latter isn’t a the fan favorite, but it’s always been a favorite of mine.
(I’m still waiting for my review copies in the mail. Just kidding; they don’t know I exist.)
Looking forward to next year, though, we have the long-awaited Netflix series based on “Asterix and the Big Fight.” Netflix released the first image from the series this week:
Not much to go by, but I also don’t hate it. That’s a good sign. Looks like they’ll incorporate sound effects into the animation, too? Very Spidey-Verse of them…
They’ve also put a few ads out on Facebook/Instagram that show some character designs that I failed to screenshot. They look good, though, so I’m still optimistic on this one.
While looking this up, I realized that I had completely forgotten that the last live action movie, “The Middle Kingdom”, has been on Netflix for a year now. I still haven’t watched it. One of these days…
But, wait, there’s more!
Another animated film is in production for 2026, titled “The Kingdom of Nubia,” and it’s sure to provoke cries of — well, we’ll see what happens when it comes out. It’s never going to get a North American release anyway, so let them do what they want to do.
On top of that, the next live action movie is also in the works. The deal was just signed last month, so there’s no schedule for it just yet. I have to imagine we won’t see that until at least 2026, but would it be weird to have a live action movie released the same year as an animated one? I’ll put it in my calendar for February 2027 for now.
The Smurfs. Lots and Lots of Smurfs
Let’s just set this story up: IMPS is the company formed by Peyo’s daughter to handle the Smurfs rights and everything that goes along with that. The Smurfs are a massive international industry all by themselves, so that makes sense.
It was announced at the Annecy Animation Festival this past week that IMPS is renaming itself to Peyo Company. (Their website hasn’t changed yet.) The purpose of this is to bring the rest of Peyo’s creations under the same banner as the Smurfs with the hopes of creating more franchises on the small and big screens — and to honor his legacy, naturally.
Yes, this means they’re working on new comics for Johan & Peewit, and something for the wonderful but overlooked Benny Breakiron. It’s so overlooked that even I’ve failed to do a review of one of the Papercutz editions of the books. Adding that to the To Do list now…
Honestly, the only other major Peyo property they could franchise after that would be Poussy, Peyo’s comic strip about a cat that would desperately need a new name in this day and age.
To go along with that, season three of the current and very entertaining television series is due out on Nickelodeon this summer, with season 4 under development already. The first two seasons are also all now on Netflix. I need to get back to work on Smurfs TV fast!
There’s also another movie scheduled for February 2025 with Chris Miller (“Shrek the Third”, “Puss In Boots”) directing and Rihanna starring as Smurfette’s voice. It’s been referred to as a “musical” since its inception, so including Rihanna is likely a very smart idea, commercially speaking
The previous Smurfs movie, “The Lost Village,” is worth a second look just for how much work they put into making it look more like Peyo’s drawing style in every detail. I hope that carries through to the next one, but I’m also not holding my breath.
For the new Lucky Luke book, it looks like the Daltons are wearing Lederhosen and wearing Bavarian hats. And the new Lucky Luke adventure will be set in Milwaukee, WI because that city has a huge population of people of German and Central European descent.
I haven’t been able to force myself to read more than a couple of pages of each new LL books since Jul took over. The few previous ones were worse so I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first. I find it try-hard and mediocre but I see that it continues selling well and many people seem to enjoy it, sadly I’m not one of them. Being in the minority, bah, what else is new.
I heard a few radio promotions recently about the Alain Chabat-led Asterix TV outing. Since he led the best live-action Astérix movie, the first one, I’ll give him a shot. But with these things you can’t really tell if it’s going to be any good until you see the finished product.
As for Peyo creations, it’s good that they give a little more visibility to the less-known ones, now that the SMURFS is a multi-media empire unto itself. I used to like POUSSY back in the 70s, but until you just said it I never realised that this cat’s name could be seen as problematic in today’s atmosphere of constant outrage.
My favourite of Peyo characters was always BENOIT BRISEFER, an amalgam of big-nose humour, Tillieux-inspired crime drama and proto-super-hero, since the boy is always very very strong unless he has a cold. It’s a really fun series. Will be hard to keep the spirit of the original 60s albums though. JOHAN ET PIRLOUIT is the original series where the Smurfs first appeared, as secondary characters, so it’s a good idea commercially to monetise them as part of that universe. As everything else, it’s all in the writing so we’ll see.
Actually, “A Cowboy Under Pressure” is Achde’s 11th Lucky Luke book, and Jul’s 5th Lucky Luke book he has written since becoming the official writer of the Lucky Luke series nine years ago in 2015.
Did you know that Cinebook’s title for the next Lucky Luke book is called: “Trouble Brewing” at all?