Sonic the Hedgehog Live-Action/CGI Movie Targeting 2020 Release Date

[DarkFell]

SatAM was a beast in it's time. AoStH can even be tolerated in small doses. Underground was so/so despite Ben Hurst absolutely hating the show that he co-wrote alongside Pat Allee.

http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Ben_Hurst

Neither Sonic X nor Boom caught my interest.

A SatAM movie would probably do better as a totally animated CGI movie versus a live-action movie, but as Leo656 mentioned, SatAM seems to be pretty much done for the time being.

[Wildcat]

The SatAm and comic characters deserve to be put into the games too. I know there was one in development a long time ago. There’s footage on YouTube.

Actually Sally, and I think one other character, does appear in Sonic Spinball during a bonus game. I forgot exactly where.

I don’t want to say never to either because a lot of surprising things do happen but not anytime soon. I think I read something about Sega approving or not approving the comic characters to be part of the game universe. I’ll have to find it.

[Leo656]

It kills me, though; Archie/SatAM continuity is the only Sonic-verse with three-dimensional characters rather than one-dimensional cutouts. It's eternally marginalized why, exactly? Because of internet furries? So what, you're not getting rid of that, and as we've seen, the Sonic fandom just makes up their own self-insert characters to ship and fawn over, anyway. "We don't acknowledge the SatAM characters because too many people wanna nail the squirrel" seems like a really thin argument, to me. Sh*t, y'know how many Sally shirts, action figures and plush dolls they'd sell? Who cares if some of the audience is "creepy", it's not the job of the corporations to dictate the behavior of the customers, its their job to create and sell content. If anything they should probably lean into that market a little more, since those are the most vocal and "passionate" fans for several years now. Take a lesson from Hasbro and MLP: You can't ignore or get rid of the "creepy" fans, so just generate content that encourages them to spend more money and let everyone go home happy.

But furries aside, the SatAM side characters are still the only ones that have any depth, so it's altogether puzzling they don't factor into things much on the larger scale of Sonic stuff. They really should.
------------------

It was indeed Sonic Spinball, Sally and the others appear when you rescue them during a Bonus game. They'd be absolutely perfect for a Sonic Heroes-style game, I'd love that. The amount of money that these people leave on the table for stupid reasons is mind-boggling.

[Wildcat]

Well I looked it up. As far as I can tell Sega does own the freedom fighters and could put them in if they wanted too.

It seems they don’t because it’s just the western-ization of Sonic and I guess they don’t consider them game-canon. It has nothing to do with furries. They created Rouge afterall

There’s no official statement or anything. Just discussions and wiki info. I don’t know how Sega actually feels about them. I’m sure they are well aware of thier popularity. That’s why I’d say they’ll probably appear in games...eventually.

There’s also some series of lawsuits over some original characters in the comics. I didn’t read it all. Seemed like a separate issue. Doesn’t matter anymore I guess since it moved to IDW.

There actually is a Sally plush that was made for some theme park attraction many years ago. There’s pics too.

[Leo656]

Oh, Jesus, that Ken Penders asshole. Yeah, basically anything that happened in the comic books since 1997 "didn't happen" because he created a bunch of the characters and situations and Archie Corporate forgot to close a loophole in his contract, so he sued them and somehow won the rights to all that stuff.

Generally, if you work for a comic book company and create a new character, like a Batman villain, you get paid but the company owns it, and they can keep using it without consulting you. If the character becomes really popular, sometimes they arrange for a little bit of extra compensation, but that's not the standard. It's called "work for hire"; coming up with ideas is part of your job, you're not automatically owed additional credit or compensation by default if some of them endure beyond your tenure with the company. Usually, when creators go to court over this, they lose, because of the contracts they signed in the beginning saying the publisher owns their work. But sometimes, as mentioned, they all sit down and bang out a bit of extra compensation if it's deemed fair.

Somehow, because of negligence on the part of Archie, Penders won everything and they had to reboot the entire comic, which is more or less why they're not publishing it anymore and IDW has it now. It's a real shame, as it's the most successful licensed comic book in history (although it was always hit-or-miss, quality-wise), but it had a really lame last few years because of the abrupt reboot and no solid execution when it came to starting over. It wasn't the same book everyone was reading since 1992; even the characters who remained had totally new personalities and backstories, so it really held no appeal for those readers, and it was never very new reader-friendly on a good day, either. So they just cancelled it without finishing the last story. Real bummer.

The root of it seemed to be Ken's insistence that he was one day going to publish his own ongoing story using the numerous Echidna characters he'd created for the Knuckles comics. But that's probably not going to come to anything on account of 1. Nobody cares about it, and 2. Everybody hates him now and doesn't want to support his work because he ruined "their" book. So all of this was basically for nothing, which is the biggest tragedy of it all.

[Wildcat]

Oh. Ya I really lost track of all the Archie stuff. I didn’t read the details but that does sound ridiculous. How can you want to make a spin-off based on characters and designs you never owned?

[LeotheLateBloomer]

Originally Posted by Wildcat

The SatAm and comic characters deserve to be put into the games too. I know there was one in development a long time ago. There’s footage on YouTube.

Actually Sally, and I think one other character, does appear in Sonic Spinball during a bonus game. I forgot exactly where.

I don’t want to say never to either because a lot of surprising things do happen but not anytime soon. I think I read something about Sega approving or not approving the comic characters to be part of the game universe. I’ll have to find it.

I believe Paperbrook posted something in the "Sonic the Hedgehog" topicin the gaming section about Sega or Sonic Team reshuffling or something where SoA will be handling Sonic onward instead of Sonic Team. If it's true, we may get what we want. While I'm not as big on Satam as I used to be, I would not be against this. All of the other characters in recent years just don't do much and all becoming less interesting the more they appear for me. Probably should have Sally as a supporting character rather than a love interest, though.

Originally Posted by Wildcat

Well I looked it up. As far as I can tell Sega does own the freedom fighters and could put them in if they wanted too.

Would you happen to have a link to where it says this? I am curious.

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by LeotheLateBloomer

I believe Paperbrook posted something in the "Sonic the Hedgehog" topicin the gaming section about Sega or Sonic Team reshuffling or something where SoA will be handling Sonic onward instead of Sonic Team. If it's true, we may get what we want. While I'm not as big on Satam as I used to be, I would not be against this. All of the other characters in recent years just don't do much and all becoming less interesting the more they appear for me. Probably should have Sally as a supporting character rather than a love interest, though.

Would you happen to have a link to where it says this? I am curious.

I just Googled Sega putting Sally or comic characters into Sonic games. There’s a few discussions that show up but no definitive answer.

Although I’ve always assumed Sega does own the freedom fighters. They were in cartoons and comics. Sally even predominantly appeared in their Sega World theme park attraction a long time ago.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by LeotheLateBloomer

Probably should have Sally as a supporting character rather than a love interest, though.

Sally is the only Sonic character to have been depicted as Sonics' wife in alternative futures, that'd be a bit jarring to just ignore that

[TigerClaw]

I hope the filmmakers took what was in the Sonic Bible and used it to explain some of the origins in the movie.
http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Sonic_Bible

It would be cool if they did Sonic's origin similar to what they had for the games originally. This origin was also shown in the comics.



Here's an excerpt for the origins of Sonic and Robotnik.

Kintobor operates a lab under a local toxic waste dump, where he rescues poisoned and struggling Animals. Sonny befriends many of these animals before being appointed as Kintobor's assistant, at which point Kintobor starts teaching him about physics. In order to pass the time, Sonny uses a treadmill that Kintobor has constructed, but when he breaks the sound barrier (761 miles per hour), he inexplicably crosses all known limits of acceleration (and laws of physics) and starts running at the speed of light (186 thousand miles per second). Kintobor is alarmed and slows the treadmill, only to find that Sonny has been turned blue by the "Advanced Non-Concussive Cobalt Effect". Kintobor renames Sonny as "Sonic" due to his display of fast speed.

Sonic uses his new speed to help Kintobor with his work, and in the process, discovers the Reverse Quantum BioFormulator (RQBF), a machine composed entirely out of gold rings. Kintobor has used this machine to transmorph all the evil in the world into six emeralds, cut by Kintobor himself, which he has stored in a lead-lined cabinet. Kintobor says that the emeralds could eliminate all evil and pollution (if stabilized by the Gray Emerald) or else double the amount of evil in the world if they were to be disturbed by radiation. Just then, a wave of radiation penetrates the Earth's surface and affects the emeralds. The RQBF turns on and casts a beam of light on Kintobor, the emeralds and a half-eaten egg that Kintobor was eating. There is no explosion, but Kintobor is somehow transformed into the obese and evil Doctor Ivo Robotnik. Sonic grabs as many gold rings as he can, then escapes.

Kintobor is Robotnik spelled backwards.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Wildcat

Oh. Ya I really lost track of all the Archie stuff. I didn’t read the details but that does sound ridiculous. How can you want to make a spin-off based on characters and designs you never owned?

Well that's the thing; in his mind, he did own them, and apparently a judge agreed.

I'm sure his spin-off strip "The Adventures of Several Hundred Echidnas Who Look Just Like Knuckles But For Legal Reasons Most Assuredly Are Not Knuckles" is gonna light the world on fire once it finally sees the light of day. I know people are chomping at the bit for that.

Originally Posted by TigerClaw

Kintobor is Robotnik spelled backwards.

Thank you, Mike Tenay and the TNA Impact announce team. (That one's for Zarius, nobody else is gonna get it.)

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Thank you, Mike Tenay and the TNA Impact announce team. (That one's for Zarius, nobody else is gonna get it.)

Have the cameras caught them reading it off the script?

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Well that's the thing; in his mind, he did own them, and apparently a judge agreed.

I'm sure his spin-off strip "The Adventures of Several Hundred Echidnas Who Look Just Like Knuckles But For Legal Reasons Most Assuredly Are Not Knuckles" is gonna light the world on fire once it finally sees the light of day. I know people are chomping at the bit for that.

That made me laugh. It’s exactly what I was thinking. Using designs and characters for your own “original” comic would seem really weird. Like a knock-off.

Regardless of winning the case nobody would take it seriously. It’d be ok if it stayed within the Sonic universe but not as it’s own thing.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Leo656

"The Adventures of Several Hundred Echidnas Who Look Just Like Knuckles But For Legal Reasons Most Assuredly Are Not Knuckles"

That made my day.

Apparently they were redrawn more humanoid with an art style more atrocious than in the Archie comics and they were still called Echidnas but it was misspelled in some weird drawn out way so they wouldn't quite be Echidnas.

I'm pretty sure the NotKnuckles stand in was called Knox. Subtle there Ken, very subtle.

[TigerClaw]

The official movie site for Japan recently open and it has a the first Poster. But it looks slightly different from the US poster.
https://sonic-movie.jp/



His snout can be seen in the JP Poster then on the US one.

[Papenbrook]

Now that I've had time to look at that poster, I ... don't think it's too bad.

This movie's still gonna bomb rock-hard, though.

EDIT:There's already MERCH??!!! (Never mind.)

Spoiler:

[Papenbrook]

Looks like I've missed some details:

Apparently, there was some storyboarding ...

Spoiler:

... of Discount Sonic ...

Also, one of the writers wrote this ...

... Yeah, this movie's gonna be a financial failure. Jump off while you can, folks.

[The Deadman]

It wouldnt be a Sonic post without Papenbrook writing it off as a flop

[Coola Yagami]

He might not be wrong.... I mean short of the movie being an ACTUAL Sonic movie, as in an animated epic adventure that solely takes place in Sonic's world..... there's really no way they can make another Garfield/Smurfs/Chipmunks type CGI Sonic co-existing with normal real life people type movie without it being a flop of some sort.

Also I guess we can update the title of this thread to 2019 release date.

[Papenbrook]

Originally Posted by The Deadman

It wouldnt be a Sonic post without Papenbrook writing it off as a flop

Don't blame me - blame Bootleg Sonic.