Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or otherwise just have a life outside of following the development of a movie aimed at children, you’ve probably heard all about the Sonic The Hedgehog controversy.
When SEGA and Paramount Pictures revealed the first trailer for the live-action Sonic flick, fans were horrified by the design of the titular hedgehog. The internet was soon awash with memes about the blue blur’s unsettling size, muscular legs, and human teeth.
In an effort to appease the hordes of gamers who’d just seen their memories of happier days playing the Mega Drive piddled on by a major movie studio, Sonic The Hedgehog director Jeff Fowler quickly took to Twitter to announce that they’d be redesigning Sonic.
The director wrote:
The message is loud and clear. You aren’t happy with the design & you want changes. It’s going to happen. Everyone at Paramount & Sega are fully committed to making this character the BEST he can be.
As a result of this hasty redesign, it was then announced the movie would be missing its planned November 2019 release date, and was instead being pushed back to February 14, 2020 – the perfect Valentine’s Day date, I’m sure we can all agree.
Since May, we haven’t really had an update on the movie’s current status – presumably because everyone involved is currently putting in fairly intense shifts to redesign and implement the main character of a feature film.
In a new interview with Variety ahead of the release of his new film Terminator: Dark Fate, producer Tim Miller spoke a little bit how the redesign came about, and the current process of the whole sorry affair.
He explained:
Look, I was with fans and so was Jeff. When the s–t hit the fan, I went over there and said, ‘The most important thing to do, man, is say, ‘I f–ked up,’ He’d already sent a tweet out an hour before I got there. He’s a good man. It was exactly the right way to handle that. The fans have a voice in this too. There’s a right way to listen.
Miller went on to say he reckons the delay will ultimately be worth it. He then added that he’s seen the new designs for Sonic, confirming that he thinks “the fans will be pleased.”
While this is presumably great news for fans, I have to assume that Miller was one of the people who signed the original design off in the first place, so I’ll probably reserve my relief until I see the redesigned Sonic for myself.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.