The Sonic the Hedgehog movie made over 60,000,000 dollars at the U.S. box office and over 100,000,000 worldwide. It has a chance of being the biggest hit released so far this year, and it definitely represents a high watermark for Sonic as a cultural figure in recent years (Regardless of how much you liked Sonic Mania it didn't get nearly this much mainstream attention.)

It's insane, then, that Sega has nothing significant to tie into this big surge of attention. Don't get me wrong, it's a very Sega thing to do, but you'd think they'd at least have like a big mobile release of some Sonic games that haven't been on IOS or Android, or a new collection featuring some of the games that haven't been released on current systems.

Nope. I guess there's the Sega Ages version of Sonic 2 coming to the Switch this week, but that's not tied into the movie in any way (including through publicity) and Sonic 2 is already on the Switch, so I don't really count it.

Given that it's been over 2 years since Sonic Forces you'd think they'd have at least an announcement of a new game, or HD ports of the Adventure series and Sonic Colors, or some sort of something. Another spin-off game. Sonic Spinball 2. Sonic Heroes on the Switch. Big The Cat's Xtreme Fishing. A port of Sonic Boom to the N-Gage.

Anyway, the Sonic movie is a massive hit and hopefully that will lead to some renewed momentum for the franchise. Sonic Mania was such a breath of fresh air and then Sonic Forces seemed like it was made with such apathy and Team Sonic Racing was such a weird and uninspired thing... It'd be great if Sega actually cared about their flagship and tried to do something even 25% as interesting as Super Mario Odyssey.

I fully believe that Sega never expected the film to be a success.

There is some new direct-like announcement happening on the 20th which might have... something, but they've said previously that 2021, being the 30th anniversary, is going to be the next big year for Sonic, with a mainline game coming then.

Personally, I like that they're take 3 - 4 years to work on the next game, instead of rushing something out for a film tie in. Hopefully that means it'll be something worthwhile and not a Sonic 06 again.

A new Sonic game is coming soon(tm). The most bizarre thing to me is that despite how important Sonic is as a franchise for Sega, the budget looks like it's shrinking with every game. Maybe they will go all out next year for the 30th anniversary?

As a side note, the Sonic comic by ADW is very good and probably the best Sonic-related thing right now.

They announced a new game back in March, so we'll probably start seeing it this year.
I might suggest there's no tie-in game due to the 25th anniversary, which was celebrated with both Mania and Forces, spinning up another game to meet the movie might not have produced the best results.
Then there's also the choppy production of the movie, it was announced in 2014, it was scheduled for 2018 which turned into 2019, then Sonic himself was completely redesigned pushing it to 2020, luckily they didn't start making a game based on the original design for the movie... actually that might have been amazing, oh god what if they had to get a Jim Carrey sound-alike :S.

I hope the attention the movie has gained gives Sega reason to put more time and energy into the next Team Sonic game, their output is famously lacking so it would be a shame to shut down momentum from the movie.

They're launching this olympic sonic game in May.

But yeah, it seems like this movie was not a sure shot to be a success.

Yeah I'm with the people that are more in the camp saying that we bet they didn't have high hopes for this thing in the first place. Ignoring the general reception to video game movies, how often does something get literally gouged by the public for it's animation style after a trailer release go on to do well when it decides to make all these changes based on the criticisms?

Even beyond that. Here is a legit question for you all. Does Sega even have traction to sell more games because of this? Having not seen the movie, and obviously people are totally fine to like what they like, it very much seems to me this movies success has less to do with being Sonic or being a video game and more to do with the "Pixar family comedy formula." That isn't to say there isn't aspects of it being Sonic and of it being a video game movie that draw many to it or are reasons why people like it. I've heard enough people say they feel it treats the source material respectfully who have seen it to not doubt that. But again, I still wonder how many who took their kids to see it and liked the movie have any interest at all in playing a Sonic game at all anyways?

A lot of people are arguing that Sega didn't have time to put out a big new mainline Sonic game, and while that can be argued either way (Forces felt like it took about 6 months to slap together out of spare parts, and something like Mania 2 could be made pretty easily in the 2 and a half years since the release of the first game) that isn't even what I'm talking about. It's super easy to find some other Sonic product they could have put out, and I gave a bunch of examples (A port of Sonic Colors to the HD systems is probably the lowest hanging fruit, but there's plenty of other stuff they could have done.) They put out a random HD port of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz so it's not like it would be unprecedented to put together a Wii to HD release, but it could be a spinoff game or a new collection with some rarer stuff or...whatever. It could be a mobile port of Sonic 3 and the Adventure games. It doesn't have to be Sonic Forces 2.

As for whether they expected the movie to be successful...I don't think it matters that much. They knew there would be a lot of advertising and interest in it, and that puts you in a position to sell games. A lot of Sonic games are already out for the current platforms so if kids want to play something Sega does have product to shift, but there were tens of millions of dollars spent on advertising this film and Sega really didn't try to take advantage of it. Licensed games have died down in part because it's hard to make them profitable with the high licensing fees, but here Sega owns the character and has games it could release if it wanted to.

I think this is indicative of Sega's lack of any coherent plan for the character (or really at all.) They just do seemingly random things and hope they will pay off. It seems odd though I guess it makes sense within the context of Sega's generally disorganized approach to...everything.

Sonic the Hedgehog: the official game of the movie of the movie of the game (working title).

The last time Sega had a plan for a tie in Sonic Boom happend so at this point I think they're just releasing shit whenever and hoping people still care about Sonic.

Also this movie got delayed repeatedly and even bad games take awhile to make. (and if The Witcher Netflix series is anything to go by people will seek out a game regardless of how old it is)

The movie was a gamble in itself, and it received A LOT of negative attention at first so it's success was pretty much in the air. They would have had to have something in development before hand. I don't think they need a video game tie in right away, but this movie is a good way to rebuild the brand and bring sonic back to the mainstream.

And if you look at things, movie tie in games aren't all that common anymore (well maybe mobile stuff I don't keep track of that)

I'm impressed with the seemingly "low budget" of $81-95 million, pulling $113 million in box office so far is a good sign but generally at least in Hollywood terms if it doesn't get double what it took to make it would be deemed a flop/failure etc. That's just what the bean counters would say though.

Still just that opening weekend ain't too shabby, too bad it's Sonic the Hedgehog.

@bigsocrates: Surely you must've realised from the second that trailer with the horrible first design of Sonic was released that Sega have nothing to do with it? It's not like Sega could just ring up Paramount and say "hey could you just tell us when that movie you're making is going to drop? Thanks."

Being the original creator of something does not entitle you to a say on anything once you've sold off the rights.

Sonic Station Live is gonna start broadcasting each month to announce Sonic things. Each. Month.

Careful what you wish for.

I’d say that 1) it’s not THAT successful and 2) no one planned on it being even this successful.

It could go on to have a good run and make a nice profit, but Jan-Feb is usually stinkertown. Nothing makes much money or reviews that well, usually.

It’s REALLY early to consider this movie something that justifies a tie-in, breathes life into the IP, etc.

So what you're saying is that this is the best video game adaptation since Mortal Kombat.

For the same reason Sony didn't have venom tie-in in the Spiderman videogame, not even costumes. Because no one believed it would be a success. At best, it would be a passing fad.

And, let's be clear: the Sonic movie, so far, is a success, but it is not a phenomenon. According to boxofficemojo, the movie has earned 113 millions worldwide, which is decent as a videogame movie, but it still doesn't cover its budget. It is still a long shot from other similar movies like Detective Pikachu (443 millions), Alvin and the Chipmunks (365 millions) and The Smurfs (563 millions). It is not even the biggest hit of 2020 so far, that "honor" being Doolittle (sniff), and since we are in february, I would say it's unlikely it will be.

@hermes: my post somewhat goes over this. It’s made more than it cost to make but if it doesn’t at least double its cost it’s a “failure”.

Movie budget was under $100 million.

@hermes said:

Hollywood accounting is famously creative. Did it really cost 113 million to make? Or did it cost 60-70 million to make and another 40 million to market? Whether or not a movie made back its "budget" usually isn't black and white.

That said, I wouldn't really expect anything but incompetence from Sega when it comes to Sonic. A new mainline, tie-in game is asking for too much but surely they could have at least cut some prices on current-gen games and put some advertising money behind the sale.

No, the "official" budget is 85 millions, but because of that creative accounting you mention (budget doesn't include marketing, printing, international distribution and localization), it is a rule of thumb that you have to multiply the budget by 2 to get when it starts earning back money...

I just realized that with pretty much every movie for the rest of the year now moved into 2021, Sonic is set to become the second highest grossing film of the year. The only movie ahead of it at the moment is Bad Boys for Life.

@isomeri: They're probably going to re-open movie theaters before the end of the year so it won't stay in 2nd. It also lost a fair amount of the tail of its gross (especially internationally) to everything shutting down.

On the other hand if the theaters don't re-open then Jim Carey will get an Oscar nomination. It's not like the first couple months of the year were full of great performances.