Sonic the Hedgehog Cinematic Universe Thread (& Knuckles)

While there's no official date yet, the first stage of a streaming release is expected next week. This would be through VOD services like Amazon Prime or Apple. That wouldn't really hit the theatrical performance too much.

My favorite "paid" service? Slotlights of course

 

Cool. Happy to see it surpassed part 2 and will still make a bit more.

 

I hope that's true ! I will buy it on early digital

EDIT: I did and watched it again already!

 

According to this article, Sonic 3 is slated to get a Paramount+ release on 1-21-2024. Take this with a grain of salt, though, as Paramount themselves haven't confirmed it.
EDIT: Actually, that was a purported PVOD release. Oops.

 

N

No, that's not Paramount+, that's PVOD meaning pay to purchase or rent at a ridiculous fee.

 

Thanks for letting me know. Should've read it more thoroughly.

 

I wonder if there can be anything done to substantially grow the audience of these films. In my opinion they are written for a younger audience and aren't really aimed or written for people who aren't children, which is why they've had an issue growing an audience easily.

Sonic Adventure 2 is one of my favorite stories of all time. I say this having read and loved Lord of the Rings. I saw this as someone who adores Lawrence of Arabia. I think Sonic Adventure 2 has great character moments, emotional pathos, and a fantastic finale. My favorite thing about the game is how seriously it took itself the entire time (before someone mentions that one time Eggman scratches his butt...I know). I was very excited to see how they would handle this game in live action. And they did everything they could to kiddify it.

Mufasa isn't even as good a movie as Sonic 3, IMO, but it took advantage of a built in audience and being a movie that says "Hey I might be aimed at kids but you adults will enjoy me a lot" when I think Sonic 3 is much more married to the idea that the movie must be silly or the morals must be heavy handed or it's not doing anything right. I know animated movies can sometimes avoid this problem, like Minions, but live action movies aimed at children have always had this issue.

I hope they can get Carrey back for the 4th one, because I feel he's a lot of the appeal of these movies for older audiences. I am glad the fans of Sonic are coming out to see the movie, and that audience is growing, but it's a shame this movie couldn't do better when I think Shadow and the plot of SA2, if handled seriously and with dignity, should have been an easy 700 million.

 

Wasn't an issue for Minions or Mario.

That's just Disney nostalgia and IP recognition doing the work, and it managed to shrink the audience if anything, compared to the previous 2019 movie.

"Disney Nostalgia" is also why they doin so much sequels and remakes instead of doing more original things like they used to, they are just not as successful in reaching new audience

 

Those are animated movies. You have said nothing by mentioning them that explains the discrepancy in performance between them when animated family films always traditionally do better than live action family films. Especially because adults will go see movies like Toy Story or Moana on their own, in droves, Sonic has been proven to be very fan front loaded in terms of box office numbers. Looking at the top 50 grossing movies of all time the only live action "family" film I see on the list is Alice in Wonderland 2010, which had a built in audience of 60 years because of the popularity of the animated movie.

Also considering Lightyear 2022 bombed while utilizing and have iconography from one of Pixar's most famous characters, nostalgia isn't enough. Disney has also produced bombs based on their famous properties too like Mary Poppins Returns and Christopher Robin (both live action family films btw). And even if the audience shrunk (which should be expected from a 5 year old prequel to the 2nd highest grossing animated movie of all time which was very polarizing) it's still much higher than Sonic's audience so...

Anyways I hope that Paramount can figure out the magical combination it would take to make these movies even more successful than they are now. It's nice seeing Sonic have success like this but I'd hate for it's cap to always be the 450 - 500 million mark.

 

Love how being an animated movie -you know...something traditionally associated with children- somehow make it more appealing for adults and leads to more sales, while live action -not associated with children as much- also somehow is not appealing for adults, so what gives.

Also love how if we look at spiderman movies, it's the exact opposite, the animated spiderverse movies are the bottom of the ranking when compared to the other 8 live action spider-men movies, so what, children prefer live action after all? making it animated made it less appealing for adults despite also stating the reason animated movies gains much is also because adults watch them? it's one way or the other, can't hide behind "being animated" excuse when notable example like this exists.

Nostalgia can't always works but it does work, Lightyear failed to appeal to anyone and also failed because it didn't actually feature characters from the toy story franchise, on the other hand, we are getting a 5th Toy Story movie, cause the IP and nostalgia is so strong with that one.

 

I'm not going to keep arguing with you about this when Box Office Pundents and people who actually do this for a living have said that Sonic's audience hasn't grown significantly between films. This is objective fact.

Animated versions of previously live action franchises don't perform as well as their live action counterparts. That is true. I brought that up at some point too.

But I'd say that Spiderverse 1 suffered from a misconception that it would be very childish and immature, as the last two Spiderman animated series were exactly that (Ultimate Spiderman, Spiderman 2017), and the 2nd movie did much better (once the misconception was understood) and I feel the only reason it didn't do even better is because it ended in a major cliffhanger with the sequel being years away.

Transformers and TMNT were associated with live action franchises that had long lost all good will with the audiences. I'd love to see how they would do if give a chance under the best of circumstances.

Sonic has had 3 movies to get away from the misconception that they are children movies, if they aren't that which you claim, and yet the audience has not grown by a considerable amount. Even with Shadow who is one of the most popular characters in the franchise.

I proposed reasons I thought might explain why the audiende hasn't grown. I'm genuinely curious about the subject. You've yet to do so.

 

@Mana I don't get why in making your point you incessantly have to troll the rest of the community. Yes we get it, you think S3 could have been creatively better with a different focus and you think that would equate to it performing better financially. Why make your avatar Mufasa and put such an incendiary status on it?

 

I changed it to Mufasa because I genuinely was happy the movie is performing as well as it is and Disney is doing well. I used to work at a movie theatre and whenever Disney was doing good, times were good for both workers and their employers because of how much business they generate.

I will change the caption at the very least because I see its being taken in a way I didn't intend.

 

Audience DID grow between movies tho, that IS an objective fact, it's also objective fact that it managed to grow WHILE competing with heavy hitters which is impressive, ignoring that while probing up other movies that actually did shrink audience between movies is disingenuous.

Ah so now it's the "misconception" excuse, nice, great, spiderman into the spiderverse is more childish than frozen and Lion king and Minions and other successful animated movies aimed at children, sure no problem.

Now the misconception was solved, people have seen the light, great, that still made "across the spiderverse" the 2nd worse grossing spiderman movie only behind the it's previous one, so again what gives

 

Show me where I said the audience hasn't grown between films. I said it hasn't grown significantly. It hasn't. Sonic 2 closed at 400 million and this one will close anywhere from 450 million to 500 million. That's not a significant bump over the course of three films.

Mufasa is already edging 600 million and that's after opening far below Sonic. Sonic should have been at 600 million weeks ago. But that would require a significant adult audience.

And you have yet to explain to me why it hasn't grown substantially in 4 years, over the course of three films, if the idea that they were just movies for fans and younger children, was just a misconception.

Actually I take back hoping Carrey comes back for the 4th movie too. I genuinely wonder how it would perform without him.

 

I Love ignoring the 1st movie which was little above 300M, cause jumping from 300 to 500 for me looks like a great bump, but again what constitutes a significant bump in your opinion? 100M? 200M? 600M bump? what number would make it significant ?

But again, focusing so much on demographics and appeal fails so much easily when you consider all thus other movies, movies aimed at children can cross 1B, movies aimed for the whole family can cross 1B, movies for adults occasionally can cross that too, thus blaming growth or decline on targeting demographics is a misguided approach

It's much simpler than that, Mufasa didn't makes sales cause audience was like "damn the word of mouth is good? i will watch it" or "oh this movie is actually good for adults? i will check it out" , it did earn this much simply because the IP recognition, a family going to cinema simple be like" oh a new Lion King movie? i recognize that, i recognize Disney, okay i will take my 10 kids and see this family friendly movie and will recommend it to my cousin and his family", Disney across generations managed to cement itself as the default choice for average consumers and combine that with recognizable IPs it can work wonders.

That's how the first 2019 movie was massive anyway, i guess even that didn't help much when the opening was weak and it will undoubtedly finish way behind the 2019 movie, so why, cause it's actually more childish than the 2019 movie according to your reasoning? did adults shrink in size or something? i guess that's a possibility if we take age demographics as a main factor like that.

 

I'm going to stop you right there. I made a post with the genuine intention of having a discussion on if there's anything that could make the sonic series' box office grow significantly and you derailed the entire thing because you don't like that i call the Sonic films, children films. Which they are. I did not insult the Sonic films in my posts and made it clear I thought Sonic 3 was a better film than Mufasa.

Changing your avatar to Shadow killing Mufasa (Mufasa is in the top 10 highing grossing movies of last year and Sonic isn't) says everything I need to know about your intentions here. Just like you did this when I was talking about why Sonic wouldn't get nominated for a best picture Oscar when it, yet again, wasn't my point.

Call this running away or whatever you want to. I just don't want to do this a fifth time. I'll just keep happily let the box office numbers prove my point.

 

Either both sonic and minions movies are children movies or both aren't and they are family movies, you can't choose one or the other.

It's not a derail when we actually have data that supports that the general audience wasn't all children and in fact a huge percentage of them were adults so it's a moot point you make anyway and it appears you don't like the truth.

Here is the data btw for Sonic 3 opening week

oh look! a majority of the audience are aged 18-34 combined with >34 we are looking at a 64% majority of adults audience, and remaining percentage doesn't account for Teenages being their own demographics so the percentage of actual children is was lower in fact, giving the data we have, well you actually admit your fault here? probably not.

Ah don't worry about that, me respectfully having an avatar of the most iconic scene in Lion King is just me paying tribute to both movies being successful and thriving and me genuinely happy that both are doing great, what's more is that 2 doing great at the same time only means more business for theaters cause competition drives business, and so i am happy for my local theatres thriving thus days.

 

I'll get this out of the way. I worked in exhibition at the corporate level for 10+ years on film teams. I've worked with other exhibition chains and talk to others in the industry. I've developed tools for forecasting future films and holdovers. We look at all factors that can influence a film's performance. Release timing, competing films in the same window whether it be holdovers, same release week, upcoming films, theatre counts, premiums screens, cinemascore, blah blah blah. I'm going off strictly from my numbers, experience and closed resources I have available.

I have explained its numbers situation, numerous times. Over several posts. Several market conditions that didn't exist with the other films exists now, capping its potential. But despite those conditions, Sonic 3 is still doing very well. I don't feel the need to repeat myself in detail, you can check my posts history.

But I will remind everyone here that up until the early tracking numbers came out, we were all betting on Mufasa easily winning against Sonic overall. I'm not trying to toot my horn here, but the only one realistic here was me which I said they would be about even with Mufasa having stronger legs to edge it out. I even made a funny image. If we're strictly only looking at bigger numbers = success, that makes me the only loser and the rest of Retro winners. But I guess there's a need for someone to feel more right than everyone else.

 

Once again as you changed your avatar as a spite towards me I won't bother reading anything you wrote.

Actually I will say I read one thing and laughed because you mentioned the opening weekend when Sonic had one of the rarest things ever happen where a movies box office was an entire 25% off from predictions to actual numbers (84 million prediction to 60 million actual is not normal and is proof the movie had a fan rush that cratered). All you're proving is that the films have a high fan and children audience.

I just skimmed you mentioning opening numbers and rather than just laugh, I feel the need to say that.