Patrick Casey and Josh Miller, the screenwriters for Sonic the Hedgehog and the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 2 were guests on the “Kellen’s Petty Talk Show” podcast.
Casey and Miller shared a lot of interesting trivia regarding the original movie, as well as some hints related to the Sonic movie sequel.
Sonic the Hedgehog trivia
- Originally, the first act of the movie was longer. A lot of it was edited out to get better pacing, in order to make Sonic and Tom get together faster.
- The deleted scene known as “Super Observant Carl” would be followed by a scene of Sonic putting the batteries on his boombox. Some snippets of the scene were shown in the original trailer.
- One of the main rules that the writers set out to accomplish was that the movie should be always centered on Sonic. They wanted to avoid the scenario of “a human star who befriends Sonic. […] Sonic has to be our protagonist.”
- The crew seemed to be not on the same page in regards to portraying Doctor Robotnik. While Casey and Miller wanted him to be funny, others wanted him to be “scary”. When Jim Carrey was cast in the role of Robotnik, it was then decided that he should be funnier.
- The movie was originally meant to be PG-13, and tried to be something like the “softer” Marvel movies.
- The scene where Sonic plays baseball was thought about early on in the development of the movie, perhaps being even longer. There was a scene where Sonic would also act out the members of the audience.
- When Casey and Miller got the job to write for the movie, it was requested to them that they should immediately begin the writing process. They thought they would have some time to do some research on the source material, but there was no time to do so. It was then decided that the movie should be based on what they remembered from their childhoods playing Sonic games on the SEGA Genesis. That turned out for the best, as they later learned that the rights were “all over the place” for material like “the comic books, some of the later games.”
- The movie’s script was mostly unchanged during the transition to Sony Pictures to Paramount Pictures. The only significant change was that during the scene where Sonic was watching Speed, the original plan was to film a small fake action movie featuring Nicholas Cage.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 trivia
The second one is bigger, more action, and there’s a lot more stuff that you will like.
Patrick Casey, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 screenwriter.
- The budget for the sequel is going to bigger than the first movie, but still smaller than Detective Pikachu’s budget. In Miller’s words, part of the reason why the first movie was successful was that “it didn’t cost as much as you think it did”. The fact that the original movie didn’t cost much and returned enough money was one of the motivations for authorizing a sequel.
- The studio found a way to realize Casey’s and Miller’s ideas for the sequel without it getting super expensive, according to Miller.
I think they found a way to make it not ridiculously expensive.
Josh Miller, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 screenwriter.
- Patrick Casey stated that the trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is going to be insane, and will “break the Internet.”
- Most of their “crazy” ideas for the sequel were kept, with the only exception being a scrapped Doctor Robotnik scene. They still have hopes of maybe using this scene in a hypothetical third film.
h/t Matias I., Rinato Ren.
