The cat – or, should we say, hedgehog – is now out of the bag.
Just as they said they would do, SEGA and Paramount Pictures ordered the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog film back to the drawing board after its first trailer was met with a ton of backlash from fans. The biggest issue people had with it was that the titular speedster looked like some cheap knock-off of the iconic video game character, what with his bizarre eyes and strangely human-esque teeth. And so, the VFX team worked hard to create a new design, one which would harken back to the classic games that we’re all so familiar with.
Thankfully, it seems they did their job, as the recent trailer finally revealed the redesign and suffice it to say, it was a huge hit with just about everyone. And now, building on that momentum, we’ve got another new look at Sonic the Hedgehog, with the fun little promo above asking the all-important question of whether or not Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is President yet.
Given that we rarely see studios bow so heavily to fan pressure that they’ve had to go back to an already-completed project and redesign the main character, it’ll be fascinating to watch how the movie performs when it lands in theaters early next year. If Sonic bombs, then the entire ordeal will have been for nothing. But if it takes off at the box office, we may see more studios paying closer attention to early trailer reactions from now on.
In any case, we’ll find out if Paramount’s effort was worth it soon enough, as the Blue Blur speeds into theaters on February 14th, 2020, when Sonic the Hedgehog will hope to win over moviegoers and possibly even earn enough money to warrant a sequel.
