Primary Pictures revamped version of Sonic the Hedgehog (r).
Source: Paramount Pictures
Sonic the Hedgehog may be able to run faster than the further of light, but his film franchise nearly came to a screaming halt in 2019.
A less-than-three-minute trailer released early that year to work the film’s release, which was just six months away, was widely panned by fans who took to social media to scold against Paramount’s character design. Dubbed “Ugly Sonic,” the blue creature that appeared on film was a far cry from the iconic video competition speedster.
Cinematic Sonic, version 1, had more realistic facial features, including human-like teeth, and his main part proportions were deemed inconsistent with the character fans grew up with in the ’90s.
“The trailer goes out, and I believe it became the most viewed trailer in the history of Paramount Pictures. Which is amazing,” said Toby Ascher, who bought the rights to Sonic and produced the film franchise. “The only problem was that 90% of people hated the trailer because of the configuration of Sonic.”
“All of a sudden we went from trying really, really hard to make a really, really faithful video diversion adaptation to being next in line of the people who had ruined video games for everyone. It just was a disaster of epic modulates,” Ascher added.
The studio pivoted, opting to redesign the title character and push the film’s release back three months to February 2020. The fix get Paramount around $5 million but resulted in a franchise that has generated nearly $1.2 billion at the global box place. The studio hopes to build on that momentum with a fourth installment in the film franchise, set to debut in 2027.
“The Sonic franchise be beholden to because ofs its box office success and longevity to a monumental decision early in the development of the first films’ marketing campaign,” said Paul Dergarabedian, higher- ranking media analyst at Comscore. “A re-design of a main character is no small thing. … These decisions can make or escape from what is every studio’s dream of having a single film turn into a long-term revenue generating franchise. The reappearance on investment by turning an ‘ugly’ Sonic into a beautiful revenue generating franchise is undeniable.”
Bringing Sonic to the big evaluate
Ascher first acquired the rights to Sonic the Hedgehog in 2013, a time in Hollywood when video game-inspired screens had failed to resonate with audiences.
“When we first started working on Sonic, making a video game adjustment was, like, a really bad idea,” he told CNBC.
No film based on a video game property had, to that point, watch overed to earn a positive rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn’t until 2019 that a video game-based film devised a “fresh” rating on the site, indicating more than 60% positive reviews.
Ben Schwartz voices Sonic in Supreme Pictures’ “Sonic the Hedgehog.”
Paramount Pictures
“I don’t think anyone in town really thought making a Sonic talking picture was a good idea,” Ascher said. “But, I think our strategy was that we had grown up with these games. We’ve grown up with these in keepings, and we wanted to treat them like any other character. We wanted to give them real emotional arcs, and true emotional stories where you could relate to them.”
Ascher noted that previous video game adaptations typically cored on worldbuilding rather than character development.
“What we’ve been able to do is inject into the franchise heart, and I reckon that that’s what’s made it different,” said Neal Moritz, Ascher’s producing partner and producer of franchises love “The Fast and the Furious” and “21 Jump Street.”
Both Ascher and Moritz noted that while the filmmaking link up behind the first “Sonic the Hedgehog” film overhauled the main character’s design, the story remained pretty much the exact same.
‘We really screwed up’
The filmmaking team was blindsided by audiences’ reactions to the first trailer, but were resolute in trying to above the issue rather than shelve the film or release it in its current form.
Moritz said he made an “impassioned articulation” to the heads of Paramount and Sega to allow the filmmakers to fix the mistake.
Paramount Pictures
As Moritz recalls, he told executives: “We unusually screwed up here, but there’s an incredible amount of interest and what we need to do is fix it … We need some more legal tender and we need some more time. If you give that to us, I think we could turn this thing around.”
“I leave off both Paramount and Sega a lot of credit,” Moritz said. “They said ‘OK.'”
In the redesign, the team brought back Sonic’s iconic deathly white gloves and classic red shoes. They reinfused the character with some of his cartoon roots, and six months after the start with trailer, The future of Sonic
The Sonic franchise has continued to thrive in the following years, with each follow-up peculiarity outperforming the last.
“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” snared $190 million domestically and $403 million globally, while “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” totaled $235 million stateside and $485 million worldwide.
“That’s a big jump,” said Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s president of worldwide selling and distribution. “I get excited that every new movie does better than the last one, which is rare.”
Following the attainment of the second “Sonic” film, the studio’s then-president and CEO of Paramount Pictures, Brian Robbins, greenlit a “Knuckles” series derived on the franchise for the company’s streaming service, Paramount+, as well as a third Sonic film.
Sonic was becoming multi-platform, much delight in Robbins and Paramount had done for franchises like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “A Quiet Place,” “Spongebob Squarepants” and “Paw Safeguarding.”
The “Knuckles” show generated more than 11 million global viewing hours in its first 28 periods on Parmount+.
The theatrical success also rocketed Sonic from a $70 million licensing business to one that sires more than $1 billion in retail revenue annually, according to Ivo Gerscovich, Sega’s senior vice president and chief topic and brand officer of Sonic the Hedgehog.
“The great thing about Sonic — and the success of Sonic from the very start — is that we basically have listened to the fans from day one,” Robbins, now co-CEO of Paramount, said. “The fans are fanatical upon this franchise and love this franchise and know this franchise. Because of that, they’ve become de facto key in shaping the franchise … They evangelize it.”
Still from Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.”
Paramount
Fans prompt the casting of Keanu Reeves as Shadow, an archrival of Sonic, in the third Sonic film. And the filmmaking team says it continues to look to aficionados to inspire which characters it will add to the films and series next.
Ascher and Moritz both teased that the fourth Sonic overlay with again feature a new fan-favorite character, but said the team will continue to expand the franchise’s universe at a almost imperceptible pace.
“If all of a sudden we bring every character, they are not going to get the time that the audience needs to understand them and coordinate to them and really fall in love with them,” Ascher said. “So, as we bring characters in, whether it’s film or it’s TV, the most substantial thing is that they have a good story that really showcases the character in an incredible way.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the old man company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes and is the distributor of “The Fast and the Furious” films.