Sonic the Hedgehog (2017 film)

Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2017 computer-animated action-adventure comedy fantasy film directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and Takashi Iizuka, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, The Kerner Entertainment Company and Sega and distributed by Columbia Pictures through Sony Pictures Releasing.

The first installment in the Sonic the Hedgehog film series, the film is produced by Jordan Kerner, Yuki Naka and Takashi Iizuka with Naoto Ohshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara as executive producers. It is written by Ken Pontac and Warren Graff based on a screenplay by J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. Based on Sonic the Hedgehog by Sega, it stars the voices of Roger Craig Smith as Sonic, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, Mike Pollock and more.

Sonic the Hedgehog premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on December 13, 2019 and was theatrically released in the United States on December 15, 2019 by Columbia Pictures, through Sony Pictures Releasing. It received generally negative reviews from critics, with criticism towards the plot, character development, directorial by Takashi Iizuka, lack of source material and visual effects, while the musical score by Michael Giacchino, the voice cast (particularly Smith, O'Shaughnessey and Pollock) and the animation received praise. It was a box office success, grossing $394.5 million against its $125 million production budget. A sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, was released on December 13, 2019.

Plot
TBA

Cast

 * Roger Craig Smith as Sonic the Hedgehog, a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog with the ability to run faster than the speed of sound, hence his name, and possesses lightning-fast reflexes to match his speed.
 * Colleen O'Shaughnessey as Miles "Tails" Prower, an anthropomorphic fox cub, with two distinct twin-tails, hence his nickname "Tails", that makes him fly when running at high speeds.
 * Mike Pollock as Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, an evil human scientist and the arch-nemesis of Sonic the Hedgehog.
 * Cindy Robinson as Amy Rose the Hedgehog, a pink anthropomorphic hedgehog who has a crush on Sonic the hedgehog and, since meeting him on Little Planet, become his self-proclaimed girlfriend, attempting to win his heart by any means necessary.
 * Travis Willingham as Knuckles the Echidna, a red anthropomorphic echidna and the current guardian of the Master Emerald, a powerful ancient relic which is his solemn duty to protect from anyone seeking to abuse it.
 * Kirk Thornton as Shadow the Hedgehog, a black anthropomorphic hedgehog/Black Arms hybrid who resembles Sonic the Hedgehog in many ways and is his main rival and occasional ally.
 * Michelle Ruff as Cream the Rabbit, a peach anthropomorphic rabbit and the daughter of Vanilla the Rabbit, her mother.
 * Quinton Flynn as Silver the Hedgehog, a silver anthropomorphic hedgehog hailing from two hundred years into the future.
 * Karen Strassman as Rouge the Bat, a white anthropomorphic bat and jewel thief that has worked as a part-time government spy for the President of the United Federation and in close association with the Guardian Units of Nations.
 * Ryan Drummond as Metal Sonic, an evil, ultra-high performance, very advanced Badnik version of Sonic the Hedgehog that was created as a secret weapon by Dr. Eggman for the sole purpose of destroying the hedgehog.

Development
TBA

Casting
During casting sessions, Roger Craig Smith, the actor for Sonic the Hedgehog in Sonic Boom, provided the voice lines for the blue hedgehog. TBA

Visual effects and animation
The animation for Sonic the Hedgehog was held at Sony Pictures Imageworks, with visual effects being done at Blur Studio and DNEG. TBA

Soundtrack
"Featured article: Sonic the Hedgehog: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" Film composer Michael Giacchino, having finished composing the score album for Inside Out in 2015, signed to composed the score for Sonic the Hedgehog. While reviewing with director Genndy Tartakovsky and co-director Takashi Iizuka, they ambitioned on a heartfelt tone of the score for some parts of the film, while they also ambitioned on an uplifting epic film-like score for epic film-like parts in the film, including the final battle with Dr. Robotnik.

Promotional marketing and release
Sonic the Hedgehog premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on December 11, 2017 and was theatrically released in the United States on December 13, 2017 by Columbia Pictures through Sony Pictures Releasing, and was followed by an international release on December 14, 2017.

Home media
Sonic the Hedgehog was released onto DVD and Blu-ray on May 28, 2018 by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Box office
Sonic the Hedgehog was theatrically released on December 13, 2017 in the United States and on December 14, 2017 in other territories. It grossed $127.8 million in the United States and Canada and $266.7 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $394.5 million.

Critical response
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, 20% of 248 critics' reviews were positive, with an average rating of 3.45/10. Its critical consensus reads, "Slow, hardly funny, and a total error, Sonic the Hedgehog will only entertain the young ones for the iconic blue hedgehog, but is hard to entertain die hard fans of the franchise." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 34 out of 100 based on 19 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore assigned the film an average grade of "C+" on a scale of A+ to F.

David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a D+, writing: "It's as slow as a living snail, and makes Sonic the Hedgehog in film look terrible as the mascot of Sega. Sonic as a whole in this film is downright atrocious. From the way he acts overall to the general arguments is too not-Sonic for fans of the franchise." Alonso Duralde of TheWrap was also critical of the film, calling it "a slow, dull and boring inexperienced waste of your time thanks to Sonic dragging the plot too far to the point it reaches its 93 minute mark. Takashi Iizuka's directorial of this film is bad as a whole, and the general fact it's produced by the company that also made the horrible Smurfs films (minus The Lost Village) is just awful".

Glen Kenny of The New York Times described at as "sonically slow", stating the film plays off as a "general cash-grab idea from the dreaded minds of Ken Pontac and Warren Graff". Owen Gleiberman of Variety heavily criticized the film as "the worst possible cash grab Sony could even produce, compared to the likes of The Emoji Movie", writing: "The idea for The Emoji Movie was to bore people until they're dead, but Sonic the Hedgehog is so painfully slow to compare to the likes of The Super Mario Movie from Paramount Pictures, which makes Sega as a whole look terrible for the film industry".

Reviewers like The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Chicago Sun-Times negatively compared the film towards other films, including The Super Mario Movie (2004), Donkey Kong's Big Movie (2007) and Assassin's Creed (2016), among others.

Accolades
Sonic the Hedgehog led the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards season with seven nominations. It won three of them: Worst Director, Worst Screen Combo and Worst Screenplay.