For the longest time, it looked as though Sonic the Hedgehog was set to become the latest big screen video game adaptation that failed to find much favor with either critics or audiences. The first trailer didn’t exactly make the movie look like a must-see family blockbuster, and that’s without even mentioning the reactions to the terrifying original appearance of the title character, which ultimately overshadowed everything else about the project and sent the creative team back to the drawing board to redesign Sonic from the ground up, resulting in a three-month delay.
However, Sonic the Hedgehog surprised many people when it finally hit theaters last month by not being completely terrible. In fact, the blue speedster’s theatrical debut raced out of the blocks at the box office in the wake of generally solid reviews, and has already made over $275 million globally, which is is good enough to place it as the seventh highest-grossing video game movie ever made after less than a month in release.
Naturally, the talk has already moved onto a potential Sonic franchise, and when asked about the possibility of follow-ups, star James Marsden admitted that not only did the cast and crew massively enjoy the experience of making the movie, but the 46 year-old is already signed up for multiple sequels, as is usually the case anytime an actor is cast in a big-budget flick these days.
“I believe, I don’t know if I’m supposed to say, as many as they want to make. Yeah, that’s my somewhat vague answer. It is such a good group of people, and it was so much fun to see Jim Carrey enjoying himself again. I think this was his second-biggest opening weekend, of all of his movies. I was kind of amazed at that statistic. He just had a big smile on his face and he was hugging everyone. It just felt like such a cool thing.”
Of course, Carrey’s performance is generally viewed as the high-point of Sonic the Hedgehog, and the movie’s ending has definitely left the door wide open for him to return in the eventual sequels. Video game adaptations may finally be starting to overcome the stigma that’s dogged them for years, and the surprise success of Sonic will no doubt see a raft of imitators getting green-lit in the near future.
