Sony Pictures Animation has acquired the rights to the classic 80s American sitcom ALF and is set to develop a hybrid live-action / CG-animated feature film, with The Hollywood Reporter revealing that producer Jordan Kerner – who recently scored a huge hit with The Smurfs – has been assigned to oversee the project. Kerner will produce the big screen adaptation alongside show creators Tom Patchett and Paul Fusco, the latter of whom is also expected to continue lending his voice to the character.
Originally airing between 1986 and 1990, ALF centred on a furry alien called Gordon Shumway (a.k.a. ‘ALF’ – an acronym for Alien Life Form), who crash lands in the garage of a suburban family, the Tanners, after his home planet of Melmac is destroyed in an explosion. Taken in by the Tanners and sheltered from the US military, ALF causes trouble left right and centre as he attempts to adjust to his new life on Earth, but of course he soon becomes an integral part of the family. Following its cancellation, the series went on to spawn an animated show, a 1996 TV movie entitled Project ALF, and the short lived Alf’s Hit Talk Show in 2004.
According to an earlier interview with co-creator and puppeteer Paul Fusco, the ALF movie is likely to reboot the story of the original series: “I think we would approach it in a fresh way. I don’t think we would duplicate the TV show, but I think we would maybe put it in a storyline where we would explain how ALF got here and put him with a new family and let the character speak for himself.”
Originally published August 9, 2012. Updated April 10, 2018.
