Well known Sonic the Hedgehog artist Tyson Hesse confirmed he will not be involved in Netflix’s upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, and sounded off indignation towards SEGA’s Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic sub-franchises early Friday morning.
In a response to a post published on Sonic Retro, Hesse cited his awareness of the upcoming series, but clarified that he has no involvement in next year’s animated series.
I am not involved in this show. I’ve been in the loop about it but don’t have the bandwidth to be a part of it right now.
Tyson Hesse
Hesse also commented that, should he be involved, that the animated series would have not taken a “Classic Sonic” direction. He also voiced his displeasure over SEGA’s usage of the Classic-Modern split, even so far to suggest that SEGA may not be interested to reutilize “Classic Sonic” in favour of “Modern Sonic”.
“But for what it’s worth I probably wouldn’t have chosen to do a classic show anyway. SEGA is never going to return to Classic [Sonic] wholesale, and the split isn’t doing this franchise any favors,” said Hesse.
Even though Hesse will not be involved in the animated series, now-deleted reports suggest that he may be scheduled to work on the Sonic movie sequel in 2022, with production scheduled to commence in a few month’s time.
The animation, produced by Man of Action Entertainment and Canadian-based Wildbrain, is scheduled to debut on Netflix in 2022. The streaming platform erroneously published a tweet that unveiled the series in December, but Tails’ Channel has learned internal developments of a “Modern Sonic long-form animation” since early last year.
This article was updated on 21 January for clarity and brevity.
