2020 film directed by Jeff Fowler
Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2020 action-adventure comedy film based on the Sonic video game series. The first in the Sonic the Hedgehog film series, it was directed by Jeff Fowler (in his feature film directorial debut), written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, and stars Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, and Tika Sumpter. Schwartz voices Sonic, a blue hedgehog who can run at supersonic speeds, who teams up with the town sheriff Tom Wachowski (Marsden) to stop the mad scientist Dr. Robotnik from taking over the world.
Development for a Sonic film began in the 1990s but did not leave the planning stage until Sony Pictures acquired the film rights in 2013. Fowler was hired in 2016. After Sony put the project in turnaround, Paramount Pictures acquired it in 2017. Most of the cast signed on by August 2018. Principal photography took place between September and October that year in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, with a release date set for November 8, 2019. Following the negative reaction to the first trailer, released that April, Paramount delayed the film by three months to redesign Sonic to more resemble his look in the video games.
Sonic the Hedgehog premiered at the Paramount Pictures studio lot on January 25, 2020. It was theatrically released in the United States on February 14 and in Japan on June 26, and received mixed reviews. It set the record for the biggest opening weekend for a video game film in the United States and Canada and grossed $320 million worldwide, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of 2020 and the highest-grossing video game film adaptation in North America. It was followed by Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) and a television miniseries, Knuckles (2024).
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.