Despite a few hiccups on the road to release, Sonic the Hedgehog has firmly cemented itself in the annals of video game movies. The blue speedster has set a new box office weekend record for video game adaptations, surpassing last year’s Detective Pikachu.
Sunday morning estimates have Sonic the Hedgehog opening with $57 million over the weekend. It’s a slightly better opening than Detective Pikachu’s $54 million if the numbers hold, but they could also jump up because of the Sunday morning, family-friendly appeal of the movie.
Outside of the US, Sonic the Hedgehog is doing solid business with $100 million over the weekend, but its numbers trail both Detective Pikachu ($157M) and the adaptation of Warcraft ($119M) in the global market. Still, there is plenty of reason for Paramount to be excited about Sonic’s release, especially after it looked like the film was going to be a major disappointment last year.
When the first looks at Sonic’s design started to leak, there was major concern among video game fans. While Paramount had tried to adapt Sonic to a “real world” atmosphere, the design was more creepy than anything. It wasn’t long before some creative fans showed how the Sonic design could be improved, though, which only made fans even angrier.
And so Paramount made the difficult choice to delay Sonic the Hedgehog and work on redesigning the character. What re-emerged was a markedly better looking version of the character that captured the spirit of the video game and was not going to give little children nightmares. That “last minute” redesign did come at a tremendous price, though, as visual effects artists had to completely redo every scene starring the film’s main character.
In the end, few will remember the stretch between the trailer and the redo, but Sonic the Hedgehog does offer a valuable lesson about video game movie adaptations. If the creators can respect the source material and deliver a product that at the very least tries to resemble the video game, then fans will be more likely to embrace it. Had Sonic the Hedgehog first appeared looking as he does now then the film wouldn’t have faced all of the adversity that it did.
Then again, it’s likely that the whole Sonic redesign situation inspired some video game fans to see the movie that might not have otherwise. Either way, the film now sits atop the list of best box office weekends for a video game movie.