‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ Director Announces Film Delay After Teeth Backlash
After significant blowback from fans following the first trailer for the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie – and then a promise to change Sonic’s bizarre look before the movie’s immanent November 2019 release date – director Jeff Fowler took to Twitter once more to announce that the film’s release date is getting pushed back. All this over a bunch of teeth.
Taking a little more time to make Sonic just right.#novfxartistswereharmedinthemakingofthismovie pic.twitter.com/gxhu9lhU76
— Jeff Fowler (@fowltown) May 24, 2019
Happy Valentine’s Day! If you can’t decipher that unwieldy hashtag, it says “No VFX artists were harmed in the making of this movie.” That may be true, technically. We would hope that the VFX artists and animators working on this barreling train crash of a project are getting paid handsomely for the extra three months of work. At the very least, they’ll no longer be rushing to change their CGI main character’s entire design, frame by frame, before autumn.
Still, the fact that fan uproar has caused this much hemorrhaging of time and resources is a little troubling! Real human labor goes into making these movies, whether the character design creeps you out or not. The whole Sonic debacle feels like a slippery slope that other productions, when confronted with similar mass criticism, have wisely sidestepped; you didn’t see Disney postponing production on the new Aladdin remake, even after the internet universally said “eeehhh” over Blue Genie Will Smith.