https://sonic-city.net/2024/09/12/p...or-canceled-sonic-the-hedgehog-tv-show-found/ So long story short, two pieces of concept art relating to a cancelled Sonic animated series have been found. The series, simply known as "Sonic the Hedgehog" (possibly just an internal production name) was in production for just a few months in 2007 at a Californian company known as phuuz entertainment, which is mainly known for doing ADR for various anime dubs. Grant Moran, a person known for his work on Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures was working at phuuz at the time and was seemingly associated with the series. These two pieces of concept art come from Gary Montalbano, an another phuuz employee. They were supposedly drawn before any writing was done, as phuuz wanted to first visualize the main settings so that they could serve as basis for the story. The two pieces are an underground lair for the main villains and a forest environment for the protagonists with gigantic trees and a herd of wild horses. I'll be completely honest, I love everything that I'm seeing here. These two pieces are absolutely wonderful, and give the exact same surreal, Ghibli-esque atmosphere that the OVA, certain SatAM environments and Sonic Boom's concept art do. And while speculation on the series' narrative is probably pointless if nothing concrete was ever written, these pieces do have some interesting implications on what they might've planned. That villain lair doesn't look anything like an Eggman base, for one. To me, that statue of a cloaked figure (and healthy, living trees) seems to suggest more of a mystical and/or arcane villain.
This barely looks Sonic-related on first look but the first concept kinda gives me Dark Oak/Metarex vibes. I can't recall if the Metarex ever crossed their hands like that but it'd make a good symbol for them. The second image almost looks like an alternate version of Knothole, with wild horses galloping around for reasons.
Last time we heard about this was four or so years ago? Didn't the producer come out and say it only got to the pitch phase before they declined picking it up? I'd assume this is related to the work assembled for that.
Yeah, BadnikMechanic found out some details of it after a posting on LinkedIn was noticed at one point back in 2018. Seems there was talk about it originally in 2018. Grant Moran, the man who had listed it commented he couldn't disclose anything about it, and there was news that apparently concept art, and a pitch bible was prepared. https://archive.sonicstadium.org/2018/03/cancelled-2007-sonic-the-hedgehog-cartoon-details-surface It seems that there was talk about it several times over the years, but prior to the art I don't think we head any media related to it released. Think it came up again due to SatAMHistorian related findings on other series.
Oh wow, did not know that we already knew about it in 2018. So the series was commissioned by Sega and had a pitch bible made for it. It therefore must've made it at least a little further than what Montalbano's quote suggests.
I was summoned. Yeah I vaugly remember writing the article on this. I think literally all the information we knew about it at the time is in the article, there wasn't anything I didn't include from what was known at the time. When I heard about this concept art earlier in the week my mind instantly went to that pitch, so it probably was related to that. Stands to reason there was some media presented with the pitch, curious though that there's no actual characters included with it. Bit odd to pitch for a brand cartoon and then not include the brand character in the pitch? So odds are there's probably something more interesting/significant out there.
