Sonic the Hedgehog (film)/Development

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Development process

The Sonic the Hedgehog film was created by Paramount Pictures in collaboration with SEGA. It was directed by Jeff Fowler who previously worked on Shadow the Hedgehog (game) and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). The visual effects were supervised by Ged Wright and Chris Uyede. The visual effects were animated primarily by MPC Film, Blur Studio and Marza Animation Planet. Marza in particular was put in charge of the opening on South Island and Baby Sonic.

Change in studio

Sony Entertainment originally picked up the rights to make the movie in 2013. They eventually "put the project at the backburner", which led to the project being moved to Paramount Pictures.

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Writing process

Before Pat Casey and Josh Miller were brought onto the project, Sony Entertainment hired Evan Susser and Van Robichaux to write the movie. According to Van Robichaux, they got a flight to Japan to pitch the movie.

Creating Tom Wachowski

According to Pat Casey, the studio told him and Josh Miller that Sonic had to partner up with a human kid in the movie. Neither of them liked the idea of Sonic teaming up with a child, so they approached executive producer Tim Miller about it, who agreed with them. They realized that Sonic should be a kid, then they created the character Tom Wachowski to fill the role of Sonic's human friend. Pat Casey wanted the hero to be a lazy small town cop, while the studio wanted the character to be more aspirational.

Dr. Robotnik

When deciding which name to use for Dr. Eggman, Pat Casey and Josh Miller decided to call him Dr. Robotnik as his actual name, then Sonic at some point in the movie would call him Eggman. Neither of them felt that Eggman was a believable name for the movie. They received very little feedback from Sega about using the name Robotnik in the movie.

Character redesign

Due to heavy backlash from the general public, Sonic's design in the movie was changed after the first trailer to stylized closer to the source material. The redesign was done by Tyson Hesse who had previously worked on many Sonic animated projects, such as the cutscenes in Sonic Mania. According to Ged Wright, the process of changing Sonic's design in the film was fairly painless. Sonic's scale and limb lengths were kept consistent so the majority of postviz work was still able to be used later on.

Deleted scenes

The Blu-ray of the film shows multiple alternate extended scenes featuring Crazy Carl. An alternate opening of the movie shows Long Claw would have traveled to Earth with Sonic and he had to take care of her before she passed away. This scene also shows eastereggs of swords from Sonic and the Black Knight cut from the final version of Long Claw's home. A scene with Sonic talking with Tom Wachowski in Rachel's house about his lightning powers. A scene with Rachel talking to Wade Whipple on the phone about Tom.

Promotional screenshots

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Production photographs

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Concept art

Characters

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  Longclaw

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  Rava, who was cut from the film

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Storyboards

From Douglas Einar Olsen's website.

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