ALF Crashes His Spaceship At Sony
With the recent success of movies like The Smurfs and Ted, it was only a matter of time before this happened. One studio exec was talking to another studio exec, feeling wistful—maybe there were a few drinks involved—and said, “Hey, do you remember ALF?” And then an idea took hold, some calls were made, some deals were struck, and the end result…
…Sony Pictures Animation has acquired the rights to ALF.
Yes, that ALF, the ’80s sitcom starring an ugly brown alien puppet. Is it coming back to you? His real name was Gordon Shumway, he crash landed on Earth and lived with the Tanner family—nerdy dad, Willie; uptight mom, Kate; bratty teen, Lynn; and his bestest little buddy, Brian. He liked to eat cats.
ALF, which stands for Alien Life Form, has been placed in the hands of Jordan Kerner, the man behind The Smurfs adaptation. He’ll produce the CG/live-action hybrid together with show creator Tom Patchett.
Along with Patchett, they plan to use the vocal talents of Paul Fusco, who voiced ALF in all 101 episodes of the series, the cartoon, and the numerous appearances that followed. Normally when rebooting an earlier property, retaining creative folks from the original is a nice show of respect to the source material. But if you’ve watched ALF in the last 10 years, you know it hasn’t aged well. How much of that do you really want to hold onto?
This is going to be horrible, there’s no way it will be any good. An ALF movie is a terrible, terrible idea, and a comic waste of time and money. No writer or director has been hired, yet, so there’s still a prayer that this monstrosity will never see the light of day.
But there’s part of me tucked away, hidden deep down inside, that can’t help but smile because, in the year 2012, someone, somewhere, still gives a shit about ALF.
