Deadline is reporting that former NBC stars Jack McBrayer and Danny Pudi, along with Magic Mike’s Joe Manganiello, are all taking a trip together to a magical land, where anything is possible. Specifically, the trio are on their way to Paycheck Town, where the clouds rain house payments and royalty checks, as they join the voice cast of the upcoming third Smurfs movie. The new film—subtitled The Lost Village, and billed as an all-animation prequel to the other films in the rich, dense Smurfs trilogy—is currently planned for a March 31, 2017 release date, giving parents plenty of time to put their affairs in order.
The new movie represents a complete overhaul of the original Smurfs cast, with Mandy Patinkin taking over the role of Papa Smurf from the late Jonathan Winters, and Rainn Wilson supplanting Hank Azaria as the villainous Gargamel. (Producers have traded one Smurfette-voicing pop star out for another, meanwhile, by tapping Demi Lovato to replace Katy Perry.)
The new stars will also be sliding into existing roles, with a typecast Pudi and McBrayer playing “smart but interpersonally challenged” Brainy and “sweet but bumbling” Clumsy, respectively. (The roles were played by Fred Armisen and Anton Yelchin in the earlier films.) Manganiello, meanwhile, will presumably be showing off a toned-down version of the same beefy charisma that earned him the role of “Big Dick Richie” in the popular stripping franchise, although his Hefty Smurf’s friendliness and loyalty hopefully won’t extend quite as aggressively as they did in Channing Tatum’s semi-autobiographical odysseys of gyration.