ALF Movie Adaptation Lands at Sony Pictures Animation

The 1986 alien sitcom ALF (Alien Life Form) will be coming to the big screen as a CGI animated live-action hybrid. Sony Pictures animation just acquired the rights to the property, and it will be produced by Jordan Kerner, who brought the wonderfully awful big screen adaptation of The Smurfs. Hopefully the ALF movie will be a much better film adaptation. 

The story centers on a friendly furry alien creature, who crash lands on Earth and ends up shacking up with a suburban family named the Tanners. Of course he's being tracked down by the government as well. ALF is known for being a very sarcastic individual who loves to eat cats. 

The original series creators Tom Patchett and Paul Fusco will also serve as producers on the film. Fusco was also the puppeteer and voice of ALF on the series. As of right now, there is no writer or director attached to the project. The fact that the creators will be involved with the series though, gives me hope that the movie will be a solid representation of the character. 

I'm looking forward to seeing how the production plays out, but it's hard to get excited for it because with The Smurfs producer attached, it could be steered in a bad direction. What do you think about ALF coming to the big screen?

Here's a more detailed breakdown of the series:

ALF (Paul Fusco) follows an amateur radio signal to Earth and crash-lands into the garage of the Tanners. The Tanners are a suburban middle-class family in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles, CA) area. The family consists of social worker Willie (Max Wright), his wife Kate (Anne Schedeen), their teenage daughter Lynn (Andrea Elson), younger son Brian (Benji Gregory), and their cat Lucky.

Unsure what to do, the Tanners take ALF into their home and hide him from the Alien Task Force (a part of the U.S. military) and their nosy neighbors Trevor and Raquel Ochmonek (John LaMotta and Liz Sheridan), until he can repair his spacecraft. He generally hides in the kitchen. It is eventually revealed that ALF's home planet Melmac exploded because of a catastrophe involving nuclear war. The alien was a gardener on his planet. In Episode Four of Season One, ALF tries to convince the President of the United States to stop the nuclear program, as ALF fears that Earth might suffer a fate similar to Melmac's, though miscalculating his words causes the President and National Security to call the FBI to arrest the Tanners. ALF was off the planet when it was destroyed because he was part of the Melmac Orbit Guard. ALF (a.k.a. Gordon Shumway) is homeless, but he is not the last survivor of his species. He becomes a permanent member of the family, although his culture shock, survivor guilt, general boredom, despair, and loneliness frequently cause difficulty for the Tanners. Despite the problems and inconveniences his presence brings into their lives, they grow to love him, though some episodes make it clear they're also afraid of how their lives would be turned upside down if word that he's been living with them gets out.