There’s been a lot of talk over the past few months about all the controversy that’s been caused by Sonic the Hedgehog‘s monstrous design (that sounds harsh, but it truly was hideous). Amidst all the hate the studio was getting though, a new design for the Blue Blur began to circulate and after Paramount officially revealed it in last week’s trailer, all those concerns have now been alleviated.
With so many people praising Sonic’s redesign, and the director himself being blown away by the wave of positive comments on Twitter, it seemed that we could all breathe a sigh of relief. Sonic the Hedgehog was back on track and on good terms with the fanbase once more and our childhoods were saved.
However, one thing that doesn’t get talked about is the cost of all this re-designing and re-animating. Maybe we’ve just been so caught up in the final product that we’ve neglected to think about the actual money spent on this new look. But it’s important to remember that these things don’t come cheap.
In fact, according to one user on Twitter, Sonic the Hedgehog’s new look wasn’t a simple case of Ctrl+Z’ing the image and touching it up again. No, the actual cost of this error is estimated to be around $35 million. This pushed the budget for the film from $90 million to $125 million.
Now, it’s tempting to say that the fans are the ones to blame for the negative reaction to Sonic’s original look, but as some people on social media have pointed out, maybe this wouldn’t have been the case had the studio made the right choices in the first place.
https://twitter.com/RyanPiccuito/status/1196416128307912706
Budget wouldnt have increased and the animators and development team wouldnt have had to back track if the company decided not to go down the route of the uncanny valley in the first place.
just saying
— Mihovil (@mihoviljollasch) November 18, 2019
Having said that, maybe more people will be keen to see the movie now in the hope that the studio has finally gotten things right. So perhaps the final box office take will be higher than it would’ve been? In any case, Paramount definitely made a good choice in choosing to redesign Sonic the Hedgehog and we can only hope that the film itself is as impressive as the icon’s new look.