Paramount's Sonic the Hedgehog movie is expected to top the box office this weekend. Adapted from the popular Sega video games, the live-action/CGI film follows the titular super-fast blue hedgehog (voiced by Ben Schwartz) as he finds his way to earth and teams up with small-town sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) to avoid being captured by the scheming roboticist Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey). The Sonic the Hedgehog movie will reach theaters this Thursday evening, February 13, after being delayed three months from its original November 2019 release date.
The delay, as you may've heard, was to give the Sonic the Hedgehog VFX team enough time to redesign the title character, following the extremely negative response to his initial "realistic" appearance in the movie's first trailer. Luckily for Paramount, the vast majority of the film's effects shots hadn't been finished yet (supposedly, the only ones that had been were featured in the trailer), and the redesign only cost an additional $5 million to complete. Even better, the reactions to Sonic's redesign in the followup trailer were universally positive and the movie's been generating better buzz ever since. In fact, it's currently projected to open at number one at the box office.
According to Variety, Sonic the Hedgehog is expected to bring in $40-45 million over the extended President's Day holiday weekend (including its grosses on Monday, February 17). Last weekend's top earner, Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), is on-course to bring in another $13-16 million this weekend and will compete with newcomers Fantasy Island and The Photograph in a tight race for second place. Meanwhile, this weekend's other new wide release, Downhill, is expected to finish far behind with $4 million.
Birds of Prey has a smaller opening than predicted last weekend, bringing in $33 million (the lowest debut for a DC Extended Universe movie yet) in spite of its positive reviews and equally supportive audience response. A number of factors have been blamed for the film's under-performance, ranging from its title (which plays down the fact it's a Harley Quinn movie) to the way its R-rating limited its potential audience(s). Theaters are now listing the movie as Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey at WB's request, in a bid to bolster its box office prospects. Regardless of whether that works or not, Birds of Prey shouldn't really be hurt by Sonic's arrival. The latter is a PG-rated family action-comedy, so it's targeting a very different crowd than the DCEU's latest.
As for Sonic the Hedgehog, its current box office estimates are more or less the same as they were last month. The film is still projected to open lower than its fellow video game adaptation Detective Pikachu (which released back in May 2019), but that isn't necessarily a problem in the long run. Even after the redesign, Sonic the Hedgehog cost an estimated $87 million to produce, which is a modest sum for a modern tentpole. Assuming word of mouth is decent (or, at the least, not terrible), it shouldn't struggle too much to break even, based on these numbers. And depending on how the film fares internationally, it might even do well enough to convince Paramount to green-light a sequel down the road.
Source: Variety
