It’s hard to remember just how much of a mess the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise was back in 2020 when the first movie came out. Sonic Mania had proven to be a wonderful dose of ’90s platforming nostalgia when it was released in 2017, but all of the recent mainline games, including that year’s Sonic Forces, had been panned. Sonic chief creative Takashi Iizuka now says that Sega was ready to give up on the franchise entirely back then, and it might have ended up doing so if not for the surprise success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
“The biggest milestone for me was the first movie…that had been a great hit and definitely changed the course of this franchise,” he said in a recent interview with One More Game. He added, “There had been good times, and there had been bad times…during the worst times, I was told by the higher-ups that we should cancel the entire franchise. I had to fight within the organization to keep the franchise as long as possible.”
Despite an internet blow-up over the initial CGI designs for Sonic in the movie, the film, which ended up revising his look, ended up being a hit with both fans and more general moviegoers. A fourth movie is now coming in 2027, and a new animated series is set to arrive on Netflix. While these transmedia efforts have raised the profiles of the series’ main characters, it will always be a game-first IP. “The franchise itself is rooted in video games,” Iizuka said. “We’re just going to base everything upon the video games. That’s our core principle.”
But the games also remain the most uneven aspect of the franchise. While Sega has found success with backwards-looking remasters like Shadow Generations, lightweight spin-offs on mobile like Sonic Dream Team have become flashpoints among fans over things like Apple Arcade exclusivity. The big test for whether Sega can solidify the blue blur’s renewed gaming cred will likely come in the form of a Sonic Frontiers 2.
While the first game that moved Sonic into an open-world setting polarized critics, it also established a blueprint for how Sega can push the franchise forward. Four years later, Sega has yet to officially confirm if a sequel is coming.
