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Upon release, the film had received positive reviews from critics and fans who praised its visuals, the performances, and its faithfulness to the source material. |
Upon release, the film had received positive reviews from critics and fans who praised its visuals, the performances, and its faithfulness to the source material. |
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| − | The film's success helped establish Paramount Animation as a prime competitor to Pixar in feature film computer animation |
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== Premise == |
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* TBA as Knuckles the Echidna, a red echidna who is very strong, TBA. |
* TBA as Knuckles the Echidna, a red echidna who is very strong, TBA. |
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* Cameron Diaz as Amy Rose, Sonic's girlfriend who is a pink hedgehog. , TBA |
* Cameron Diaz as Amy Rose, Sonic's girlfriend who is a pink hedgehog. , TBA |
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| − | * Jim Carrey as Dr. Eggman, |
+ | * Jim Carrey as Dr. Eggman, a mad scientist and inventor who is after Sonic's super-speed powers for world conquest, TBA |
* TBA as Scratch, TBA |
* TBA as Scratch, TBA |
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* TBA as Grounder, TBA |
* TBA as Grounder, TBA |
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Revision as of 17:28, 6 January 2021
"We've gotta go fast." -Tagline
Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2001 American computer-animated action-adventure comedy film based on the video game franchise of the same name. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, Andrew Adamson and Jeff Fowler, and released on May 18, 2001, by Paramount Pictures.
It stars Tom Hanks, Greg Cipes, Cameron Diaz, TBA, TBA and Jim Carrey as the voices of the lead characters.
Sonic the Hedgehog premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It was widely praised as an animated film that featured adult-oriented humour and themes while catering to children at the same time. The film was theatrically released in the United States on May 18, 2001, and grossed $490.4 million worldwide against a production budget of $95 million. Sonic the Hedgehog won 2001's Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Upon release, the film had received positive reviews from critics and fans who praised its visuals, the performances, and its faithfulness to the source material.
The film's success helped establish Paramount Animation as a prime competitor to Pixar in feature film computer animation.
Premise
After discovering a small team of animal heroes led by a blue, fast hedgehog (Sonic), a small-town police officer (Tom Wachowski) must help it defeat an evil genius (Dr. Eggman) who wants to do experiments on it.
Plot
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Cast
- Tom Hanks as Thomas Michael "Tom" Wachowski, The sheriff of Green Hills who wishes to join the SFPD. He befriends Sonic, Amy, Tails, and Knuckles, and aids him in there quest to stop Robotnik.
- TBA as Sonic the Hedgehog, a blue hedgehog that is gifted with superhuman speed, and the main protagonist of the movie.
- Freddie Highmore as Tails, a yellow fox with two tails, hence his name. He has the ability to jet-propel himself with his tails, by spinning them around fastly, TBA.
- TBA as Knuckles the Echidna, a red echidna who is very strong, TBA.
- Cameron Diaz as Amy Rose, Sonic's girlfriend who is a pink hedgehog. , TBA
- Jim Carrey as Dr. Eggman, a mad scientist and inventor who is after Sonic's super-speed powers for world conquest, TBA
- TBA as Scratch, TBA
- TBA as Grounder, TBA
- TBA as TBA, TBA
- TBA as TBA, TBA
Production
Development
Development for a film adaptation based on the Sonic the Hedgehog video games began in 1993 during the production of DIC Entertainment's television show Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Michealene Risley, the newly appointed consumer products director who helped green-light Adventures, negotiated with several Hollywood producers. Sega CEO Tom Kalinske, however, was wary of damaging the brand, citing the commercial and critical failures of the Street Fighter film and other video game movies. Despite Kalinske's concerns, Sega was enthusiastic about a film adaptation. In August 1994, Sega struck a development deal with MGM and Trilogy Entertainment Group, with Pen Densham as the executive producer of the film.
MGM and Sega hired Richard Jefferies, an associate of Risley from her days at Marvel Comics, to write a film treatment. At the time, Sega was developing Sonic X-treme for its next console, the Sega Saturn, and asked Jefferies to feature the Saturn in the screenplay. Jefferies' treatment, entitled Sonic the Hedgehog: Wonders of the World, was submitted in May 1995. While the draft received a positive response among MGM and Sega executives, Shinobu Toyoda suggested Kalinske replace Robotnik with a meaner villain. MGM cancelled the project after a failed attempt to revive the film at DreamWorks; Jeffries suggested that the film was scrapped as both Sega and MGM wanted a higher share of the profits, while Densham said it followed creative differences between Sega and Trilogy.
In 1997, Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to produce and distribute a film based on Sonic the Hedgehog, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Bloo J's attention and the studio decided to make it into a film. Recounting the inspiration for making the film, TBA
On June 10, 1997, an animated film was announced as Paramount Pictures and Steven Spielberg signed on to direct a film based on the video game series, After buying the rights to the film, Katzenberg and the other animation heds at Games Animation quickly put it in active development in November 1997, Steven Spielberg had thought about making a traditionally animated film adaptation of the video game series before,
On January 7, 1999, it was revealed that directorial efforts had shifted from Spielberg to Robert Zemeckis, who had previously been hand-picked by Spielberg to direct the Back to the Future film franchise and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
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Post-production
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Casting
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Animation
Sonic the Hedgehog was originally set up to be a live-action/CG animation hybrid with background plate miniature sets and the main characters composited into the scene as motion-captured computer graphics, using an ExpertVision Hires Falcon 10 camera system to capture and apply realistic human movement to the characters. A sizable crew was hired to run a test, and after a year and a half of R & D, the test was finally screened in May 1997. The results were not satisfactory, with Katzenberg stating "It looked terrible, it didn't work, it wasn't funny, and we didn't like it." The studio then turned to its production partners at Pacific Data Images (PDI) which had been renamed to Paramount Data Images in 1997 after Paramount bought it when working on Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius in 1998, who began production with the studio in 1998 and helped Sonic the Hedgehog get to its final, computer-animated look. At this time, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was still in production by the studio and effects supervisor Ken Bielenberg was asked by Aron Warner "to start development for Sonic the Hedgehog." Similar to previous PDI works, PDI used its own proprietary software (like its own Fluid Animation System) for its animated movies. For some elements, however, it also took advantage of some of the powerhouse animation software in the market. This is particularly true with Maya, which PDI used for most of its dynamic cloth animation and for the hair and fur of Amy, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Tom, the others and Robotnik.
"We did a lot of work on character and set-up, and then kept changing the set up while we were doing the animation," Hui noted. "In Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, we had a facial system that gave us all the facial muscles under the skin. In Sonic the Hedgehog, we applied that to whole body. So, if you pay attention to Sonic when he talks, you see that when he opens his jaw, he forms a double chin, because we have the fat and the muscles underneath. That kind of detail took us a long time to get right." One of the most difficult parts of creating the film was making the fur of Sonic, Amy, Tails and Knuckles flow smoothly so that it didn't look like that of a Chia Pet. This fell into the hands of the surfacing animators who used flow controls within a complex shader to provide the fur with many attributes (ability to change directions, lie flat, swirl, etc.). It was then the job of the visual effects group, led by Ken Bielenberg, to make the fur react to environment conditions. Once the technology was mastered, it was able to be applied to many aspects of Sonic the Hedgehog including grass, moss, beards and eyebrows, the human hair realistic was different from Sonic, Amy, Tails and Knuckles fur, requiring a separate rendering system and a lot of attention from the lighting and visual effects teams.
When the animation was about to be finished, Tom Kalinske proposed giving the film live-action sequences of a grandfather reading the story to his grandchild, similar to that of The Princess Bride; however, these sequences would be cut due to budgeting issues and were replaced instead by a storybook opening narration sequence from TBA.
Sonic the Hedgehog has 31 sequences, with 1,288 shots in every sequence total. Aron Warner said that the creators "envisioned a magical environment that you could immerse yourself into." Sonic the Hedgehog includes 36 separate in-film locations to make the world of the film, which Paramount claimed was more than any previous computer-animated feature before. In-film locations were finalized and as demonstrated by past Paramount animated movies, colour and mood were of the utmost importance.
Originally, the designs from the film were meant to be nonfaithful to the original videogame series, and more realistic. However, they were not received well by the animators and the creative team led by TBA that was developing the film's character designs decided to give them designs more faithful to the video games. The designs were changed to giving the Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles a more cartoony-like appearance with color fur and TBA. The new design for the Sonic and his friends was done by young newcomer artist TBA.
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Musical score
Sonic the Hedgehog one of the Paramount animated films to have Alan Silvestri team up with John Powell to compose the score following TBA (TBA), TBA (TBA) and TBA (TBA), TBA
Sonic the Hedgehog, along with 1994's Wonder Park and 1995's Shrek, introduced a new element to give the film a unique feel. The film used pop music and other Oldies to make the story more forward. Covers of songs like "On the Road Again" and "Try a Little Tenderness" were integrated in the film's score. As the film was about to be completed, Katzenberg suggested to the filmmakers to redo the film's ending to "go out with a big laugh"; instead of ending the film with just a storybook closing over TBA as they ride off into the sunset, they decided to add the song "I'm a Believer" covered by TBA and Smash Mouth, TBA
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Release
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Box office
Sonic the Hedgehog opened on around 6,000 screens across 3,587 theaters, eleven of them showed the film digitally, made possible by the THX Division of Lucasfilm, This was the first time that Paramount had shown one of its films digitally. The film earned $11.6 million on its first day and $42.3 million on its opening weekend, topping the box office for the weekend and averaging $11,805 from 3,587 theatres. In its second weekend, due to the Memorial Day Weekend holiday, the film gained 0.3 percent to $42.5 million and $55.2 million over the four-day weekend, resulting in an overall 30 percent gain. Despite this, the film finished in second place behind Pearl Harbor and had an average of $15,240 from expanding to 3,623 sites. In its third weekend, the film retreated 34 percent to $28.2 million for a $7,695 average from expanding to 3,661 theatres. The film closed on December 6, 2001, after grossing $273.7 million domestically, along with $216.7 million overseas, for a worldwide total of $490.4 million. Produced on a $95 million budget, the film was a huge box office smash and is the fourth highest-grossing film of 2001 behind Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and Monsters, Inc.. The film sold an estimated 47,290,600 tickets in North America.
Sonic the Hedgehog became the highest-grossing animated film ever to be released in Australia, passing the mark set by The Lion King in 1994. In the United Kingdom, Sonic the Hedgehog regained the top spot at the British box office after being beaten out the previous week by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, earning a $20.3 million since its opening in the UK, it became the highest-grossing film based on a video game in US box office history, surpassing Super Mario Bros. until Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 2004 and The Angry Birds Movie in 2016
Critical reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 88% approval rating based on 203 reviews, with an average rating of 7.81/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "While simultaneously embracing and subverting Fittingly fleet and frequently fun, Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game-inspired adventure the whole family can enjoy and a fine excuse for Jim Carrey to tap into the manic energy that launched his career, and offer viewers a funny, fast-paced ride. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "universal acclaim" Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert praised the film, giving it four stars out of a possible four and describing it as "jolly and wicked, filled with sly in-jokes and yet somehow possessing a heart". USA Today's Susan Wloszczyna praised Tom Hanks's and TBA's performance, stating it "gives the comic performance of there careers, aided by sensational digital artistry, as he brays for the slightly neurotic motormouth, TBA
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Home media
The film was released by Paramount Home Entertainment on VHS and 2-disc DVD on November 2, 2001. Both releases included Sonic's Green Hill Zone Karaoke Dance Party, a 3-minute musical short film, that takes up right after Sonic's ending, with film's characters performing a medley of modern pop songs.
Sonic the Hedgehog was released on video the same day that Pixar's Monsters, Inc. hit theatres. Since videos were traditionally released on Tuesdays, Disney's executives did not receive this well, saying that the move "seemed like an underhanded attempt to siphon off some of their film's steam". Paramount responded that it "simply shifted the release to a Friday to make it more of an event and predicted that it and other studios would do so more frequently with important films." Monsters, Inc. earned that weekend more than $62 million, breaking the record for an animated film.
Sonic the Hedgehog's video release made more than $100 million and eventually became the biggest selling DVD at the time with over 5.5 million sales. Sonic the Hedgehog generated more than $420 million in revenue for Paramount on DVD and VHS and has sold more than 21 million copies of the 23 million shipped by January 2002 worldwide, more than 10 million Sonic the Hedgehog DVDs have been sold by that point.
A 3D version of the film was released on Blu-ray 3D by Paramount Home Entertainment on December 1, 2010, which included the 2008 short film, Keroppi: The Christmas Eve Gift, which is a remake of the Christmas special of the same name, along with its sequels, and a regular 2D Blu-ray boxset of the series was released six days later, Sonic the Hedgehog was released on 4K Blu-ray on May 15, 2020.
Marketing
Theatrical release promotions
- To promote the release of Sonic the Hedgehog (2001) in theatres, Burger King, giving out a selection of ten exclusive Candy Caddies based on the Shrek characters, their Big Kids' Meals
- In the US, M&Ms released a flavour of their chocolate candies called "Blue Berry Sonic M&Ms" with the flavour of Blueberry and normal M&M flavouring.
- Ice cream chain Baskin-Robbins also ran an 8-week promotion of the film, selling products such as Sonic's Hot Fudge Green Hill Zone Sundae, a combination of Oreo Cookies 'n Cream ice cream, hot fudge, crushed chocolate cookies, whipped cream and TBA, and Sonic Freeze Frame Cake, featuring an image of TBA and TBA by sunflowers.
- In The US and the UK, Hasbro and Hasbro Gaming released action figures, sets and interactive board games as toys for the film.
- In a marketing stunt from April-July, Paramount had multiple street artists vandalize physical Atlantis ads and posters around 2001-2002. They drew random Sonic-related drawings and phrases. The stunt was brought back in 2004 when Home on The Range was about to release and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2004) was coming out.
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DVD/Blu-Ray promotions
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Cultural references
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Trivia
- TBA.