Sonic The Hedgehog director Jeff Fowler on redesigning Sonic

Remember the first Sonic The Hedgehog trailer that featured a horrendous rendering of the title character? Those days seem long ago thanks to Paramount Pictures, which pushed back the release date in order to allow the visual-effects team to completely redesign Sonic into something a bit more fan friendly. And while the results were praised, the stress of such a massive last-minute undertaking certainly took a toll on director Jeff Fowler.

“I think it had been about five months that had passed since the first trailer,” Fowler told Digital Spy. “We had worked very hard on our updates to the character. It was definitely a little bit of like, ‘Oh man, what happens if they don’t like this?’ But really, everyone that saw it internally as I was working on the film, just responded so positively. It really felt like, once we shared it with the fans, they would really embrace it and be excited about it. Fortunately, any anxiety I had the night before passed really quickly once it was released. Because, yeah, it was such an incredible feeling to see Sonic 2.0 get embraced the way it was.”

This is one of the instances where studio mandates actually seemed like it helped the production, although we’ll have to see whether the film itself is any good when it hits theaters this weekend.

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Sonic The Hedgehog is a live-action adventure comedy based on the global blockbuster video game franchise from Sega that centers on the infamously brash bright blue hedgehog. The film follows the (mis)adventures of Sonic as he navigates the complexities of life on Earth with his newfound – human – best friend Tom Wachowski (James Marsden). Sonic and Tom join forces to try and stop the villainous Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) from capturing Sonic and using his immense powers for world domination. The film also stars Tika Sumpter and Ben Schwartz as the voice of Sonic.

The film should have originally hit theaters on November 14. After very negative feedback from audiences surrounding the design of the iconic character, though, Paramount delayed the release to February 14, 2020. Subsequently, they used that extra time to redesign Sonic to better fit his look from the video games.

Sonic The Hedgehog hits theaters on February 14. Let us know your impression in the comments section below.