Rolling around at the speed of sound. Got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow! As part of a multitude of release date changes from Paramount, a date was finally given to the much anticipated Sonic the Hedgehog movie sequel.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 will be released on April 8, 2022. The release date was confirmed in a Twitter post by Sonic voice actor Ben Schwartz. This confirms that he’ll be returning to the film series alongside the previously announced return of director Jeff Fowler and writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller. On the production side of the film we also learned Neal H. Moritz, Toby Ascher, Toru Nakahara, Hajime Satomi, Haruki Satomi, and Tim Miller will be taking part as well.
We still don’t know what the plot of Sonic The Hedgehog 2 will be, although the end of the first film teased an appearance by Sonic’s best friend Tails and Robotnik on an alien world. We wrote about those final scenes here. There are many places the sequel could go, including appearances from more of Sonic’s video game supporting cast and maybe even a trip to Sonic’s home planet which he left behind the opening minutes of the first film. We speculated about that previously but Sonic’s home planet could possibly be a big part of the film considering the state of the film industry right now.
With so many release dates and shooting dates being pushed back, production on live-action films have ground to a stand still thanks to Covid-19 pandemic. However, one area of Hollywood that has been able to keep on track has been animation. Voice actors are able to record from home and animators can more or less get their jobs done from home as well.
This is only speculation on our part, but perhaps Sonic The Hedgehog 2 could take advantage of animation still being able to proceed. With the segments on Sonic’s home world from the first film receiving glowing praise from fans of the series, perhaps more of the sequel could be set there or at least on another alien planet. That way production could get started on the film without having to put any of the cast or crews safety on the line.
But what would that mean for Sonic’s human friends, Tom and Maddie? Would they not be making appearances? We haven’t heard anything about James Marsden and Tika Sumpter return ing but considering the advances in digital sets the two could be green screened into a movie mostly set on Sonic’s world. Again, this is all baseless speculation but it would be a way to keep the film on track with its new release date. At the very least, animating a chunk of the film on Sonic’s home world would at least get the film started until they can finally resume shooting in person down the line.
Stay tuned to Den of Geek for more Sonic the Hedgehog news!