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.

Early Pat Casey and Josh Miller plot pitch

After Pat Casey and Josh Miller came on board, they pitched to the director Jeff Fowler a plotline closer to the video games. The concept was a Chaos Emerald or all of them had possibly fallen to Earth in a jungle in some uninhabited part of South America and it mutated the animal life. Sonic was the protector and kept humans out of this valley where the animals lived. Dr. Robotnik would have defeated Sonic and stole the Chaos Emeralds for himself. Sonic would have had to follow Dr. Robotnik back to the United States to find the Emeralds, or something bad will happen to the valley. They pitched the idea to Sega and they liked it, but it was against their rules for the Sonic universe. Sonic had to come from another world, not from another part of Earth.

Early Jeff Fowler plot pitch

Separately from the Casey and Miller pitch, Jeff Fowler pitched the idea that was about Sonic as a kid. In it, Sonic was not allowed to run, but would have found a way to travel into the real world. He would have sneaked out so he could run free, but ran afoul of Dr. Robotnik, and causes the problems to happen. Pat Casey and Josh Miller would then develop Jeff Fowler's pitch into what the movie became.

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.

Before Jim Carrey came onboard, there was a lot of debate within the staff about how funny Dr. Robotnik should be. Pat Casey felt that Robotnik needed to be funny and also a formidable opponent for Sonic. Often they were told to take out the jokes they put into the script, in an effort to not make Dr. Robotnik too silly. Once Jim Carrey was casted for the role, Pat Casey and Josh Miller got to put all their jokes back into the completed script. Eventually, most of Jim Carrey's scenes were rewritten to some degree as he had his own ideas for the character. Jim would often want something different to say for a scene, then Casey and Miller would write a list of new lines to pick from.

Developing the themes of the film

When planning out the movie, they knew they didn't want to make a giant act one on another alien planet away from Earth. They needed to find a way of getting Sonic to Earth faster, so they thought about making Sonic an outside observer, a little bit like The Little Mermaid. They created a scenario where Sonic has his incredible powers but couldn't find a home.

Tails and Knuckles

Before coming up with the theme of loneliness for Sonic, Tails and Knuckles would have been involved with the plot of the movie. They decided to cut them from this movie to focus on Sonic's character, and felt it would be more powerful to introduce them later in the sequel.

The lizards

While at Sony, the studio wanted the writers to create some new characters that they would own, rather than Sega. They came up with the villain Rava the Destroyer, (who eventually appeared in a comic). They decided to cut the character out because they felt there were too many characters in the plot, and they wanted to focus on Robotnik. The lizard attack scene at the start was a leftover from the new character idea. They decided to replace the lizards with the Echidnas to tie things closer to the video games, and set up the sequel. Paramount was not sure if the fans of the video games would even notice the echidnas in the movies. Pat Casey felt that the studio never fully understood the Sonic fanbase when it came to details like this. When Tyson Hesse came onboard, he eventually became the voice of the fans for them at the studio.

Casting Ben Schwartz

Early on, Ben Schwartz recorded for a test scene of Sonic to sell the movie to the studio. Pat Casey said the test scene was sort of a sequel to the movie. Sonic and Tom were back at Green Hills and were playing with the radar gun as a game. Sonic would have ran by Tom's car so fast it would have sent the vehicle flying into the ditch. It was a standalone scene to test the animation of Sonic they made as they were leaving Sony.

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. The one part we do know was mostly finished with the old design was the baseball scene.

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 the Destroyer, who was cut from the film

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Storyboards

From Douglas Einar Olsen's website.

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