Director pledges to redesign Sonic the Hedgehog in upcoming movie

The trailer for 2019’s Sonic The Hedgehog movie was a disaster, prompting outrage from the franchise’s fandom for one simple reason; Sonic didn’t look like Sonic. 

In response to the fan backlash against the trailer, Jeff Fowler, the film’s director promised to redesign the character, stating that “Everyone at Paramount & Sega are fully committed to making this character the BEST he can be”. At this time, it is unknown what Sonic’s new design will look like, but hopefully it will look a lot more like the Sonic we know from his videogame outings, rather than a fuzzy member of the blue man group.    

What’s concerning is that Sonic’s original trailer placed the film’s release in November 2019, with Fowler mentioning using the “gottafixfast” hashtag to describe his plans for a Sonic redesign. Redesigning Sonic will require the film’s animators to rework every scene in the movie with features Sonic, which is no small task, making it possible that Sonic’s design changes will result in harsh working conditions for animation staff, assuming that the film isn’t delayed. 

Another possibility is that Sonic’s redesign was already planned, with the film’s first official trailer baiting the internet with a controversial character design to garner more media attention. The film’s Sonic design has been leaked before, and those leaks had already garnered a lot of community hatred, something which should have made the film team aware for their mistakes long before now. 

As it stands, most fans are agreed that they dislike Sonic’s current design and are mostly happy with Jim Carrey’s interpretation of Dr Eggman. Perhaps a Sonic redesign will make the film more appealing to cinemagoers, though that remains to be seen.