We recently spoke to a few people who were lucky enough to see early test screenings of Sonic the Hedgehog and let’s just say that it’s a good thing Paramount took five months to redesign the titular character. Apparently, the original design made the film “look like a horror show” and every moment the supposedly lovable hedgehog was on screen it “made people in the theater feel uneasy.”
It’s safe to say that that’s probably not the reaction the studio was hoping for and thankfully, they revamped the design once they heard how much everyone hated Sonic’s new look. It took almost half a year, but it definitely appears to have been worth it, as the new trailer featuring the updated protagonist is getting much better reviews and it now seems that Paramount’s saved the potential blockbuster from bombing at the box office by spending a little money to fix the glaring issue.
From what we’ve heard, executives at the studio had a feeling that diehard fans would react poorly to the character’s new look, but figured that they could ride out the initial backlash and still make a lot of money from the more general audiences. Clearly, they had no idea that there would be such a strong pushback from literally everyone.
Thankfully, they responded swiftly to all of the criticism and gave the speedster a much-needed makeover. While some of us may always have nightmares of the hideous version of Sonic we saw online that day, we’ll hopefully never have to sit through an entire film with that monster in our face.
Maybe one day Paramount can release the original version in October to give us all a good Halloween scare. Until then, though, we’re happy to pretend that first trailer never happened and move on with our sanity still in tact.
Sonic the Hedgehog is expected to race into theaters on February 14th, 2020.