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Rihanna now has a host of blue pals to join her journey as Smurfette in the animated The Smurfs Movie for Paramount Pictures and Paramount Animation.

During the studio’s presentation at CinemaCon on Thursday, Paramount chief Brian Robbins announced that an all-star cast has been set for the film including Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Jp Karliak, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Nick Kroll, James Corden, Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddingham, Sandra Oh, Alex Winter, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña with Kurt Russell and John Goodman. Or, as Robbins put it, “Pretty much the rest of the Screen Actors Guild.” He also praised Rihanna as “the most legendary Smurfette ever.”

The news comes one year after Rihanna turned up to surprise CinemaCon attendees on the Colosseum stage inside Caesars Palace to announce that she had signed on to tackle the project as a triple threat by providing the voice of Smurfette, producing alongside Ryan Harris,...

Lin-Manuel Miranda in the animated musical “Vivo” plays an adorable-looking kinkajou, or a “honey bear” native to the rain forest. And he’s been tasked with delivering a song and a love letter to a music superstar played by Gloria Estefan.

This first trailer for “Vivo” comes from Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation, and the film features new songs from the “Hamilton” creator as the kinkajou also named Vivo as he travels across the world. He teams up with an energetic tween girl to help him get to Estefan’s character and deliver a song that will change the world and help reconnect two former partners.

“Vivo” also stars in its voice cast Zoe Saldaña, Juan de Marcos, Brian Tyree Henry, Michael Rooker, Nicole Byer and newcomer Ynairaly Simo as Vivo’s plucky young travel companion.

Kirk DeMicco (“The Croods”) directs “Vivo,” which is co-directed by Brandon Jeffords and written...

Netflix dropped the full trailer Thursday for “Vivo,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s love letter to Cuba and his first starring animated musical, made at Sony Pictures Animation (streaming August 6th). In addition to conceiving the idea a decade ago and writing eight original songs, Miranda voices the title character: a singer-musician kinkajou (a rainforest “honey bear”), who plays music in a lively Havana square with his beloved owner Andrés (Juan de Marcos of the Buena Vista Social Club). That is, until tragedy strikes, and Vivo journeys to Miami to deliver a love song to retiring superstar, Marta (Gloria Estefan) with the help of energetic tween Gabi (newcomer Ynairaly Simo).

“It’s taken so many turns, but at the heart of this story is this incredible friendship between Andrés and Vivo, and how it launches Vivo on an incredible journey from Cuba to Florida, where he does a lot of growing up,...

Exclusive: Netflix has licensed all global rights, sans China, to Sony Pictures Animation’s Vivo. The movie, directed by Oscar nominee Kirk DeMicco (The Croods) and co-directed by Brandon Jeffords (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2) with new songs written and performed by Tony-winning Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, was recently scheduled for a theatrical release on June 4. The new drop date on Netflix is still to be determined.

I understand this is a similar deal to Netflix’s pickup of Sony’s Kevin Hart movie Fatherhood whereby Netflix gets the first window, which is streaming, and Sony will retain home entertainment and linear TV rights to all other territories, including China theatrical, after the pic’s exclusive run on the streamer.

Note the recent licensing of Sony’s Vivo by Netflix is outside the streamer’s new multi-year $1 billion deal with the Culver City studio. That deal commences in 2022, as previously reported,...

Sony Pictures has set a date for the sequel to 2018’s animated hit “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse,” which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film this year. The as-yet untitled follow-up to the Marvel spinoff that nabbed more than $375 million worldwide off a $90 million budget will debut in theaters on April 8, 2022. Sony dropped the news via the studio’s Twitter account Friday afternoon.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (who also trumpeted the news on Twitter) will return to produce the sequel, which picks up where the Marvel/Columbia Pictures movie co-directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, left off. The original film’s voice cast included Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage, and Zoë Kravitz.

While no details have yet been released for the “Spider-Verse” sequel, a post-credits sequence in the original film teased the arrival of...

The following DreamWorks Animation films will be distributed by Fox:

The Croods – March 22, 2013

Turbo – July 19, 2013

Mr. Peabody & Sherman – November 1, 2013

Me And My Shadow – March 14, 2014

How To Train Your Dragon 2 – June 20, 2014

Happy Smekday! – November 26, 2014

The Penguins Of Madagascar – March 27, 2015

Trolls (working title) – June 5, 2015

B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations – November 6, 2015

Mumbai Musical (working title) – December 19, 2015

Kung Fu Panda 3 – March 18, 2016

How To Train Your Dragon 3 – June 18, 2016

Related: DreamWorks Animation To Fox For 5-Year Distribution Deal

The Croods is being written and directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco and produced by Kristine Belson and Jane Hartwell. The film stars Nicolas Cage, Ryan Reynolds, Emma Stone, Catherine Keener, Clark Duke, and Cloris Leachman. When their cave is destroyed, the Crood family is forced to embark on an epic adventure into a pre-historic world in search of a new home.

Turbo is based on an original idea by David Soren, who is directing.