Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog will always be known as the last big budget blockbuster to hit theaters in the pre-COVID age, with Jeff Fowler’s hybrid of live-action and CGI releasing on February 14 of last year, only weeks before the industry and the entire world was ground to a standstill by the pandemic.
Despite having its big screen run cut short, the video game icon’s feature debut still managed to perform admirably. In fact, Sonic the Hedgehog is the highest-grossing console-to-screen adaptation ever in the United States, the fifth-biggest earner in the genre’s history, and one of just three to have ever secured a Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Naturally, hopes are high that the sequel will be able to deliver upon the increased expectations, but Jeff Fowler revealed in an interview with Collider that he’s already got one eye on the future after being asked if he had plans in mind for an eventual third installment.
“Of course. Even if somebody didn’t ask me to be thinking about ideas for future installments, it would be impossible not to. Even as we’re working through the visual effects and animation on this film, it’s impossible not to already get excited and to be starting to scheme about all the directions that the story could go, what new characters coming in, the impact that they could have.
It’s the best part of the creative process when it’s just kind of a blank canvas and you can really just start to have blue sky ideas, even if, again, it’ not in an official capacity. If the request comes through to start laying the blueprints for another Sonic film, I will be armed and ready with all kinds of ideas. I would just love to get that opportunity.”
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is in a good position to hit big at the box office in April next year, as the successor to a popular family favorite that’s found an even bigger audience on home video. Much like the opener, the second movie will almost certainly plant seeds for another outing, which will probably be given the green light sometime in May.