Detective Pikachu and Sonic The Hedgehog were the first live-action movies of the Pokémon and Sonic franchises, respectively, and yet only the latter is getting sequels and spinoffs. Sonic and Pikachu, both giants of the video game industry, have always seemed like difficult characters to adapt to live-action. While Sonic and Pokémon have been successful in many different media, with Pokémon taking the lead in terms of quantity of animated series and movies, the jump to live-action is something that history had already proven to be quite difficult.
Examples abound to show how challenging live-action video game adaptations are. There are the famous disastrous cases such as 1993's Super Mario Bros. or Jean Claude Van Dame's Street Fighter, films that are remembered to this day for their embarrassing attempts to adapt video game characters for the big screen. 1995's Mortal Kombat showed that it was possible to create a good enough movie despite changes to the source material, but Mortal Kombat: Annihilation's failure set the whole thing back. There have been solid movie franchises based on video games, such as Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, but not enough to redefine the genre. Even big-budget movies like Warcraft struggled to get people to theaters, and a lot of today's efforts in adapting video games have been shifted towards the TV format, which helps explain why it took so long for IPs like Sonic and Pokémon to get the live-action treatment.
The wait for a live-action Pokémon movie ended in 2019 in an unusual way. Rather than adapting the classic adventures of a Pokémon trainer like Red or Ash amidst battles and tournaments, Warner Bros. and Legendary chose the not-so-famous Detective Pikachu game, in which a different Pikachu from the anime helps solve a mystery, to be adapted. Despite an attempt at a simpler story and a high-profile name like Ryan Reynolds in the cast, Detective Pikachu did only okay at the box office, especially domestically, and never got a sequel. Interestingly, 2020's Sonic The Hedgehog, whose box-office numbers did not differ that much from Detective Pikachu, got a sequel in Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and will have a trilogy. The reasons for that difference between the two proprieties involve analyzing domestic box office numbers and not just the global ones, a metric in which Sonic did better, and the approach of each studio towards its IPs.
How Much Detective Pikachu Made Compared To Sonic
Released in 2019 and with a budget of over $150 million, Detective Pikachu had a domestic opening weekend of $54M, surpassing 2000's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider by 10 million to become the biggest domestic opening for video game adaptation – at least until 2020. Detective Pikachu finished its theatrical run with $433M worldwide, of which $144M was claimed domestic and $289M overseas. By comparison, 2020's Sonic The Hedgehog opened with $58M in the US, making it the biggest opening weekend for a video game movie.
Throughout its theatrical run, which benefited from solid reviews and fans' goodwill following the studios' decision to change Sonic's design, Sonic The Hedgehog claimed $319.7M at the box office. Of that total, $149M was domestic, and $170M was international. In other words, while Sonic The Hedgehog had a lower box office total than Detective Pikachu, it made more in the US than the Pokémon film.
How Much Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Has Made So Far
Continuing with what had worked in the first film, such as Jim Carrey as Eggman, while also expanding the Sonic universe with characters like Knuckles and Tails, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 setup itself to be bigger than its predecessor. The 2022 film opened with $71M, setting up a new record for video game adaptations. With a four-week/30 days theatrical run so far, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 has made $349M at the worldwide box office, of which $170M was claimed domestic and $179M overseas. Once again, the Sonic franchise surpassed Detective Pikachu's box office results in domestic terms, yet it will not surpass the Pokémon film at the worldwide box office.
Paramount Has Plans For A Sonic Cinematic Universe
Before the release of Sonic 2, Paramount had already shown interest in creating a cinematic universe centered around Sonic and other SEGA characters. With the success of Sonic 2 at the box office, those plans are now much closer to becoming a reality. In addition to Sonic 3, there will also be a Knuckles spinoff series happening for Paramount+. Idris Elba, who played Knuckles in Sonic The Hedgehog 2, is set to his reprise his role. Considering the number of supporting Sonic characters and all the possibilities that decades of games offer, the Knuckles spinoff could be the first of many similar Sonic projects.
Why Sonic Is Getting Sequels But Not Pokémon
All those elements considered, it is easier to understand why Sonic is getting live-action sequels but not Pokémon. More than the worldwide box office, the domestic box office is what often decides whether a film will have a sequel or not. On that metric, both Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 did better than Detective Pikachu. That said, Detective Pikachu's box office was far from bad, especially globally, which points to other reasons for not getting a follow-up film.
It is important to remember that Warner Bros., the studio behind Detective Pikachu, has plenty of IPs at its disposal, such as the MonsterVerse, the DC Universe, and Harry Potter, and it can choose to focus on the ones that are guaranteed success. Paramount, on the other hand, does not have that many options. The studio owns important movie franchises such as Mission: Impossible and Transformers, but overall does not have as many franchise-potential IPs as Warner Bros.
Not only that, but Paramount is also trying to create a catalog of properties for its streaming platform, Paramount+, which currently has the also video game adaptation Halo and the Star Trek shows at its flagships. In that scenario, the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise can be a valuable asset for the studio, both for theaters and for Paramount+, in a way that Detective Pikachu and potential sequels would not necessarily be for Warner Bros. Pokémon is a massive IP that is synonymous with financial success, but, at least for now, it is Sonic and his team of heroes, and not Pikachu, who are about to become live-action movie stars.