Sonic The Hedgehog's road to the big screen

In 1993 two Sonic tv shows were released that same exact year “Sonic The Hedgehog” & “The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog”. At this point it seemed like the best next step would be to make a film, and MGM bought the rights to it. That's right you heard me correctly the hedgehog and the lion from MGM teamed up to make a movie. A script was written called “Sonic Wonders Of The World” that was submitted in 1995. The script seemed to get positive reactions from both MGM and Sega, but production was delayed and creative differences and companies wanting higher shares of the profits got in the way. MGM ultimately made the decision to cancel the project, DreamWorks then attempted to revive it but they too failed.

In 2002 the cartoon company DIC was contacted about the possibility of making an animated sonic movie that would be a continuation of The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog, which made sense considering the show was 10 years old at the time. A script called “Sonic Armageddon” was written which was not a continuation of the show but rather a reboot. By 2003 plans were able to move forward, but by 2007 the project was scrapped due to the death of Sega’s licensing manager who was also overseeing the film’s project at the time. It was as if Sonic just could not catch a break or that it was just not meant to be for him to ever actually be on the big screen.

Things began to look up though because in 2013 Sony acquired the rights to Sonic The Hedgehog with Colombia being on board with it and began the development process for a movie. Jeff Fowler was brought on board as director who had some involvement in a 2005 sonic game by providing some of the animation. It is unknown why Sony at this point in time had a sudden interest in sonic, one theory though is that Sony had released a movie called “Pixels” which featured old school video game characters and so maybe they wanted to make another movie with video game characters and couldn't think of any better characters to use other than sonic. In 2016 Sega announced that a Sonic The Hedgehog movie would be released in 2018, however production for a sonic movie was left in a turnabout situation. Sony had to temporarily suspend production on the movie as a result but in 2017 Paramount bought the rights to the film from Sony and despite changes of studios the production staff remained. Now production was back in full swing this time with a November 2019 release date. The final idea for the movie was a live action film that was to focus on the formation of the rivalry between sonic and robotnik, with Jim Carrey being cast to play robotnik and Ben Schwartz to voice sonic. However despite there now being a script, a complete plot idea for the movie, all the cast being hired on and filming had now begun there was still 1 more problem before a sonic film could be released.

In early 2019 the official trailer for the movie Sonic The Hedgehog was released, it featured the Coolio song “Gangsta’s Paradise”, sonic fans questioned this choice in song as they did not find anything wrong with it or anything but rather that it just isn't the type of song you would associate with sonic. But this choice in songs wasn't the only problem discovered from the trailer, sonic fans raged on social media more specifically twitter over sonic’s design when the trailer was released with many threatening to never see the movie. Sonic’s design had a more human look with human teeth and separate eyes, reportedly even employees over at Sega hated the design of their company’s mascot. This caused the release date of the film to be pushed back a 3rd time this time to February 2020 and an extra 5 million dollars was reportedly needed just to redesign sonic. Jeff Fowler, the film’s director was also reportedly even anxious sonic fans might not react positively when they see the redesign. Many fans were even mad that the redesign even had to happen in the first place.

After 24 years of what seemed to be development hell, “Sonic The Hedgehog” was finally released on February 14 2020. It received positive reviews despite the much needed redesign the original trailer forced, and the movie did so well at the box office that Paramount released a sequel 2 years later that featured the same cast but added some more sonic characters. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was released on April 8 2022.