There are a lot of things to be excited about today. The Michael Jackson media circus is winding down. A party at Comic Con will feature hilarious/awesome metal bands Gwar and 3 Inches of Blood. I’m eating some delicious homemade salsa. Oh, and the Smurfs movie has a director. Yeah, the last item doesn’t really fit. According to THR, the lucky chap is Raja Gosnell, who previously helmed all of your favorites: Scooby Doo and its sequel, and more recently Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I guess there’s more after the jump, if you care.

Colin Brady had once been attached to direct, but that evidently fell by the wayside a couple months ago. Producer Jordan Kerner has been developing this project for seven years, which means he’s had seven years to get the following statement ready to copy/paste a director’s name in:

With Raja coming aboard, we now have a brilliant director who has proven time and again that he has a deft touch in blending the worlds of physical comedy and honest emotion with both live action and photo-real animated characters. Our three-apple-high heroes are in good hands, and we feel absolutely positively Smurfy to be working with him.

The CGI/live action hybrid is planned for both 3D and 2D release on December 17, 2010. Will it look like the image we posted almost a year and a half ago? The studio is keeping the plot quiet, but it’s the bloody Smurfs. Papa Smurf, bunch of other blue guys, one girl, Gargamel, that cat…all of it. Maybe there’ll be a second female Smurf to shake things up. Sure, there was always the possibility that someone could come up with a wild breakout idea that would actually make this interesting. But hiring Gosnell to direct would seem to imply the direction Columbia and Sony are shooting for. Which is fine, really. Did you actually want to be convinced to see a Smurfs movie?

I’m sure they’re giving this at least as much thought as Donnie Darko did.