The family film Smeshariki: Through the Universes made its digital premiere in Russia on November 6 on the streaming platforms Okko and Kinopoisk.
The live-action and animated feature became available to stream online three months after its initial theatrical release. Over the course of its cinema run, the movie grossed 335 million rubles and received generally positive reviews from viewers.
Directed by Andrey Marmontov, the new entry in the franchise takes place across two parallel worlds. The story moves between the familiar animated realm of the Smeshariki characters and a vision of the future filmed with real actors.
According to the plot, the characters Krosh and Yozhik find an unusual device that transports them into what appears to be a game about the future. In that world, the pair are ordinary human children aboard a spaceship flying to Mars, and their adventures begin when the heroes realise that their situation is not a game at all.
Cast and franchise background
The main roles in the live-action portions of the film were played by young actors alongside established Russian performers Lyudmila Artemyeva, Aleksandr Lykov, Yan Tsapnik and Nikolay Dobrynin.
Artemyeva and Dobrynin are well known to Russian television audiences for their roles in the hit comedy series Svaty, while Lykov and Tsapnik are veteran screen actors across Russian film and television dramas. Okko and the Yandex-owned platform Kinopoisk operate as two of the largest subscription video-on-demand services in Russia, regularly hosting domestic theatrical releases after their box office runs conclude.
Smeshariki, which is distributed in English-speaking territories under the title Kikoriki, is a long-running Russian animated franchise created in Saint Petersburg in the early 2000s. The original television series centres on a community of spherical animals, including the energetic blue rabbit Krosh and his quiet, bespectacled friend Yozhik the hedgehog, and has expanded from short animated episodes into several full-length theatrical films.
