Sonic’s Major Redesign in 2019 Didn’t Affect the Film As Much as You’d Think Find help us

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has been playing in theaters for a full week now, and although the film has lost its top box office spot during Christmas week to Mufasa: The Lion King, it has still been a major financial success that’s garnering major praise from critics and audiences. However, if you had asked someone when the first Sonic the Hedgehog trailer was revealed in 2019 where the franchise was heading, they probably would have told you “straight into the garbage.” The first look at the blue speedster was met with immense criticism, so much so that he was completely retooled into the design we know and love today.

During a recent interview with Collider’s Aidan Kelley to promote the third Sonic film, scribes Josh Miller and Pat Casey were asked how much the Sonic redesign affected other elements of the film, such as the script. Casey explained that “There were no reshoots at all. All the live-action stuff remained exactly the same. So the story overall remained pretty much the same. We did come back in and retool some stuff, especially the very beginning of the movie.” Miller went on to say:

“Yeah, I was gonna say it wasn’t even that changing the design necessitated retooling anything in the script. It was more that we got to, because on any movie, including the sequels, there’s always a release date. And filmmakers, I’m sure, Jeff Fowler and Toby Ascher and everyone would say the same thing: You never actually have as much time as you wish you could have. But when they bumped back the release date a few months, just because they needed time to be able to re-render certain things, that just gave the whole production more time to keep retooling with the script. So it’s all things we probably would have done if the release date had already been in February of 2020 the whole time. So it was, it was kind of an, actually an interesting miracle, in a way, to get this extra time that you almost never get.”

It’s a bit surprising that the only thing that needed to be changed was Sonic’s character model. Still, it’s a testament to the work of Miller and Casey, and director Jeff Fowler that the film could proceed as originally planned. The first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was met with divisive reviews from critics, who scored the film at a 64% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was a hit among general audiences, who approved of the speeding blue hedgehog’s debut at 93%. The story of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) is the perfect example of what can happen when a studio listens to feedback from fans, especially fans who have such a dedicated and long-running connection with the source material.

How Have the ‘Sonic’ Movies Done at the Box Office?

The first Sonic the Hedgehog movie opened to $58 million at the domestic box office on its way to grossing more than $300 million by the end of its worldwide theatrical run, numbers that were both surpassed by the sequel. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which features the debut of Idris Elba’s Knuckles, opened to $72 million and finished its run with just over $400 million, a steady improvement. As for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, it opened to $60 million, a total between the first two movies, but only time will tell what kind of box office numbers the film will turn in.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now playing in theaters everywhere. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of the film and find tickets below for a showtime near you.

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