Sonic The Hedgehog Movie Date Shifted, But Is It Enough?

I don’t think any of us want to relive the first Sonic The Hedgehog movie trailer or the subsequent fan reaction. That said, it did not take long to get a response from director Jeff Fowler, with a promise that everyone’s favorite hedgehog would be fixed. #GottaFixFast started trending, but we were left to wonder just how fast that would happen. The director once again turned to Twitter to give fans an update:

So now we’re looking at February of 2020, Valentine’s Day to be exact. That’s about 9 months from now, for any superfans hoping for a Sonic baby. All kidding aside, this was the only thing that they could do to avoid a disaster after the major backlash. My only issue now is whether or not that was enough time.

There is a joke about not harming animators in the tweet, but their well being is still my main concern here. There is a lot to consider when a decision like this gets made. There has to be a character re-design process to figure out how they want to make the character look now. After that, the animation needs to be changed and rendered again. This isn’t a simple point and click, it’s hard and time consuming work. Once that is done there is still post production, which could also include bringing voice actors back in to redo lines after the animation is done. I have talked to a lot of voice actors, and this is pretty common. All of this and we haven’t even talked about the fact that this will likely increase the movie’s budget, which needs to be approved. If everyone involved is going to put in long hours to fix this movie, then they obviously need to be paid accordingly.

So what’s the right answer? I said this when I initially talked about the fallout on a episode of the podcast: what’s the rush? Sure you could work around the clock to get this done, but why not spend a bit more time? If I were suggesting a date, I would go somewhere in the Fall of 2020. Maybe October? It seems like Summer 2020 wouldn’t be a good plan and even Spring has it’s challenges. Fall takes the pressure of a time crunch off, and gives plenty of time to promote the new design.

I really hope that this all works out and we get the Sonic movie that we’re hoping for. At the same time, we also have to consider the possibility that changing the design of a single character won’t turn this into an instant masterpiece. There were still plenty of questions about this movie after the first trailer. All we can do is wait, because we likely won’t be getting another trailer for a while yet. My advice, I would pencil that release date in and leave the pen in the drawer (assuming anyone actually writes anything anymore.) This might not be the last release date shift that we get,