When Sonic the Hedgehog was first revealed in live-action film form, reception was less than kind for the speedy blue creature. His appearance wasn’t what fans were expecting and he quickly became fodder for memes everywhere. Outcry online forced the hand of the production team who took Sonic’s live-action interpretation back to the drawing board, bringing on Sonic Mania artist Tyson Hesse to help with the redesign. Though reception to the new design has been a lot more positive, it came at an enormous cost in addition to a delay to the film’s release date. One rumor puts the total Sonic the Hedgehog movie budget at $125 million, an increase of $35 million from the original $90M budget.
The rumor comes by the way of Twitter user TRAFON and is as-yet unconfirmed by Paramount or anyone related to the production of the film. TRAFON admits that this isn’t yet official, but that the cost could potentially be even higher once you factor in redoing the marketing for the film and delaying the release date.
A follow up to this. Apparently these numbers are unconfirmed by a marketing team, so they aren’t actually OFFICIAL yet, that was my bad I should have said it was an estimate
That being said, factoring in ads, moving the date back, etc, it could actually be more than 35 mil too pic.twitter.com/SAscMGvKju
— TRAFON (@RiseFallNick) November 18, 2019
Whatever the actual cost (if it ever ends up getting reported officially), it’s clear that Paramount determined that the money would be well spent. In addition to appeasing fans disgruntled by the original design, the whole debacle has gained quite a bit of public attention that the film may not have received without the delay and redesign. That’s a massive cost/benefit analysis that Paramount had to do in order to determine if redesigning Sonic’s look would pay out in the end. So far the online consensus seems to be very happy with the redesign, but whether that sentiment will put people in theater seats this February is a question that still needs to be answered.
[Via: We Got This Covered]
