With a less than perfect start to its movie marketing game, Paramount’s Sonic The Hedgehog found itself sparking an outcry from fans of the beloved Sega mascot to redesign the film version of the character. Oddly enough, it worked, as director Jeff Fowler soon promised the fans afterwards that a reworking of the character was on its way.
Though now we've learned that promise has bumped Sonic The Hedgehog to a new release date, in order to facilitate that revision of Sonic’s silver screen appearance. This announcement came today, in the following form:
Jeff Fowler was once again the herald of news pertaining to the movement of Sonic The Hedgehog’s progress, and this delay was basically the other shoe dropping on his previous announcement. With only a handful of months to scrap and redesign the Ben Schwartz-voiced chili dog aficionado, the new concern of the day was that getting Sonic into fighting shape for a November release date was going to cause a lot of overtime for VFX artists, and in turn a lot of pain.
Thankfully, the February 14, 2020 release date is definitely a step in the right direction, as there’s obviously a ton of work ahead. Not only will the film co-starring James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, and Jim Carrey as the villainous Dr. Robotnik have to work on fashioning a new image for Sonic, they’ll also have to insert that vision into Sonic The Hedgehog’s entire finished product.
Looking at the box office calendar, February 2020 is going to be more competitive than usual though. With Birds of Prey and Peter Rabbit 2 opening a week before Sonic The Hedgehog, and the Kingsman prequel, The Great Game, opening on the same day, the video game adaptation will now face stiffer competition than it would have in its November 2019 release slot.
So it wouldn’t be a total surprise to hear that additional reshoots and/or another release bump, past the one announced today on Twitter, might be in the works for Sonic The Hedgehog, especially with additional work coming into play in order to boost the film’s chances of box office success.
For those curious about how that first trailer looked, or for those readers that are just in the mood to re-watch the first look at Sonic The Hedgehog, you can look that very trailer for yourself:
Who knows how long it will take to get our next look at the evolution of Sonic The Hedgehog? At this point, we’ll probably see an unveiling during the summer, with a new trailer done by the time fall starts to cool the summer winds. It’ll be worth it if it means that the VFX team behind Sonic’s big debut can work at a pace that isn’t breakneck, but still accelerated, in the name of progress.
Sonic The Hedgehog will now open on February 14, 2020. Which means there’s plenty of time for you to research your remaining options at the box office this November, through using our 2019 release schedule.
