In an interview with Paste Magazine, Toby Ascher, current executive producer of the Sonic movie series at Paramount, revealed his ambitions for the video-game adaptation in the press hype cycle leading up to the Knuckles series’ release on 26 April.
Ascher spoke about the conception of the Paramount Plus exclusive, and his aim to explore the backstories of the series’ supporting cast. Among fans, Knuckles has proved to be a popular choice to reach this aim. The trailer, released by the film corporation early this year, has already amassed close to 10 million views in the first 2 months since its upload. Many fans enjoyed seeing various homages to Knuckles’ past appearances, like his hat from the OVA, and his appreciation for grapes.
We got really excited about the idea of expanding our characters in our world into television, specifically, because it gives us a platform to really do character studies. […] What television did for us is it gave us time to go into some of the more supporting characters in depth and really build them out in cool ways.
Toby Ascher
While not explicitly confirming a Sonic ‘cinematic universe’, one much in the vein of Marvel’s and D.C. Comics’, Ascher delved into future plans for the top-grossing movie and now television franchise.
He also touched on how his team would only produce character spinoffs like Knuckles if they felt that they had stories about the cast worth telling and expanding upon, perhaps in reference to recent underperformance of shows about side characters like Madame Web and Morbius, and the insistence on creating character spinoffs for as many characters across a cinematic universe as possible.
The Sonic franchise on the movie side is going to be these Avengers-level events. They’re going to be these big, exciting stories that have a lot of different characters. […] I don’t think there’s any closed doors on future television, future seasons of Knuckles, so everything is wide open. I think it’s important to us that we’re not just making stuff to make stuff.
Toby Ascher
Ascher also brought up the quality of the upcoming Knuckles mini-series.
We thought we could translate [the fish out of water comedy at the end of Sonic 2 into a full series. I think it’s by far the funniest version we’ve had in any of the Sonic movies so far. It leans into weird comedy partially because of Adam Pally and because of what Idris brings in a really great way.
Toby Ascher
The Knuckles mini-series will release exclusively to Paramount Plus on 26 April in the US, and 27 April in other regions. All six episodes will be released simultaneously.
h/t: Paste
