Sonic the Hedgehog movie director Jeff Fowler has revealed that he suffered from anxiety the night before the character’s highly-anticipated redesign was revealed to the public. Speaking to Digital Spy, Fowler said that although he received positive feedback internally, he was worried about response from the public, who bashed the original design enough that Paramount Pictures had to reconsider.
Fowler said:
I think it had been about five months that had passed since the first trailer. We had worked very hard on our updates to the character. It was definitely a little bit of like, ‘Oh man, what happens if they don’t like this?’ But really, everyone that saw it internally as I was working on the film, just responded so positively. It really felt like, once we shared it with the fans, they would really embrace it and be excited about it. Fortunately, any anxiety I had the night before passed really quickly once it was released. Because, yeah, it was such an incredible feeling to see Sonic 2.0 get embraced the way it was.
Such was the response to the original design that even Sonic co-creator ended up thanking fans when the redesign was announced. Yuji Naka said that the “power of Sonic fans is amazing” and that “it is good to go in a good direction.”
Unfortunately, the VFX studio behind the redesign ended up having to close shop due to “external market pressures.” Former employees of Vancouver-based Moving Picture Company reportedly said that they were working up to 17 hours a day on Sonic and another project before the shutdown.
Sonic the Hedgehog will release on February 14th.
[Source: Digital Spy via NME]
