In this articlePARAFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTParamount Pictures revamped version of Sonic the Hedgehog (r).Source: Paramount PicturesSonic the Hedgehog may be able to run faster than the speed of light, but his film franchise nearly came to a screaming halt in 2019.A less-than-three-minute trailer released early that year to tease the film’s release, which was just six months away, was widely panned by fans who took to social media to rail against Paramount’s character design. Dubbed “Ugly Sonic,” the blue creature that appeared on film was a far cry from the iconic video game speedster.Cinematic Sonic, version 1, had more realistic facial features, including human-like teeth, and his body proportions were deemed inconsistent with the character fans grew up with in the ’90s.”The trailer goes out, and I think it became the most viewed trailer in the history of Paramount Pictures. Which is amazing,” said Toby Ascher, who acquired the rights to Sonic and produced the film franchise. “The only problem was that 90% of people hated the trailer because of the design of Sonic.””All of a sudden we went from trying really, really hard to make a really, really faithful video game adaptation to being next in line of the people who had ruined video games for everyone. It just was a disaster of epic proportions,” Ascher added.The studio pivoted, opting to redesign the title character and push the film’s release back three months to February 2020. The fix cost Paramount around $5 million but resulted in a franchise that has generated nearly $1.2 billion at the global box office. The studio hopes to build on that momentum with a fourth installment in the film franchise, set to debut in 2027.”The Sonic franchise owes its box office success and longevity to a monumental decision early in the development of the first films’ marketing campaign,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “A re-design of a main character is no small thing. … These decisions can make or break what is every studio’s dream of having a single film turn into a long-term revenue generating franchise. The return on investment by turning an ‘ugly’ Sonic into a beautiful revenue generating franchise is undeniable.”Bringing Sonic to the big screenAscher first acquired the rights to Sonic the Hedgehog in 2013, a time in Hollywood when video game-inspired films had failed to resonate with audiences.”When we first started working on Sonic, making a video game adaptation was, like, a really bad idea,” he told CNBC.No film based on a video game property had, to that point, managed to earn a positive rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn’t until 2019 that a video game-based film generated a “fresh” rating on the site, indicating more than 60% positive reviews.Ben Schwartz voices Sonic in Paramount Pictures’ “Sonic the Hedgehog.”Paramount Pictures”I don’t think anyone in town really thought making a Sonic movie was a good idea,” Ascher said. “But, I think our strategy was that we had grown up with these games. We’ve grown up with these characters, and we wanted to treat them like any other character. We wanted to …
