Sonic the Hedgehog 2 director Jeff Fowler says that going forward, the Sonic movies will not necessarily follow the formula of the game franchise they are based on. Sega's hugely popular video game series has been entertaining fans around the world since 1991. The highly anticipated sequel to 2020's surprisingly successful film, also directed by Fowler, is coming to theaters in about a week and a half.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will see the titular Blue Blur (voiced by Ben Schwartz) adapting to his new life as the neighborhood hero of Green Hills, Montana. But when Dr. Ivan Robotnik (Jim Carrey) returns from his exile on the mushroom planet with the "source of ultimate power" — and a new partner in Knuckles the Echidna (Idris Elba) — Sonic must team up with his new friend, Miles "Tails" Prower (Colleen O'Shaughnessey), to take them down. The movie will also see the return of James Marsden as Sonic's friend Tom Wachowski, Tika Sumpter as Tom's wife Maddie, and Lee Majdoub as Robotnik's assistant Agent Stone.
In an interview with IGN, Fowler stated that upcoming Sonic projects will not necessarily follow the same plot as the original games. These projects include the third Sonic the Hedgehog film, recently confirmed to be officially in production, along with a Paramount+ exclusive series that will center around Knuckles the Echidna. Read the director's full thoughts below:
“It's not always going to be a linear progression of like 'Oh, this was in Sonic 2 so it's going to be in the Sonic 2 film'. It's going to be a little bit of a cherry picking, a little bit of a melting pot. There's so much great, inspiring imagery to pull from the 30 years of games. So if we didn't get it in one film, there's always the chance that we'll revisit it somewhere else."
Despite this, Fowler went on to say that some of the imagery in this second movie, such as Tails flying the Tornado and delivering Sonic into battle, was directly inspired by the original Sonic 2 game. He then hinted that he has a "back pocket full of stuff" that didn't necessarily fit into Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but could be useful for the third movie. He stated that there is a character who is teased in this second movie, and that character "definitely is something I'd be very excited about telling a story with.”
The future of this Sonic cinematic franchise is looking bright. Sonic the Hedgehog 2's early reviews have been quite positive, and are therefore doing a good job of building up the fan excitement. The fact that the director will not be following the exact formula of the games going forward adds an exciting level of mystery as to what the story could entail. Hopefully, the character Fowler teased will turn out to be Shadow the Hedgehog, the video game franchise's edgier anti-hero — this would lead to a very intriguing story for the third film.
Source: IGN
