Sonic the Hedgehog (2007 film)

Sonic the Hedgehog (released as Sonic Adventure: The Movie in some countries) is a 2004 fantasy adventure action film directed by Michael Bay and written by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Based on the video game franchise published by Sega, it is the first installment in the original Sonic the Hedgehog film series. The film’s voice acting cast includes Ben Schwartz, Karen Bernstein, Dwayne Johnson, Hannah Tointon, Kathryn Newton, Elara Distler, Jim Carrey, Tyler Perry, and Ron Perlman. The film follows a blue hedgehog named Sonic the Hedgehog, and his friends, Miles “Tails” Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, E-102 Gamma, and Tikal to stop the evil Dr. Robotnik and the water god, Chaos.

Paramount Pictures bought the film rights to the game in November 1999 for a reported £1 million ($1.65 million). Production began in 2000, with Michael Bay being chosen to create the film from a shortlist of producers that included Steven Spielberg and J. J. Abrams. After Paramount put the project in turnaround, Warner Bros. acquired it in December. Exercising its option on just two elements from the multi-script acquisition (a different screenplay was written by James Cameron, Ted Newsom, John Brancato, Barney Cohen, and Joseph Goldman), Warner Bros. hired Scorsese to create a working screenplay (credited as Cameron's), and Abrams received sole credit in final billing. Directors Tim Burton, Roland Emmerich, Ang Lee, Chris Columbus, Jan de Bont, M. Night Shyamalan, Tony Scott, and David Fincher were considered to direct the project before Bay was hired as director in 2001, after his film performance, Pearl Harbor (2001). The main characters were cast between March and May 2002 and principal photography took place between November 2002 and September 2003 in Los Angeles, California, with additional filming and pick-ups taking place in August and November 2005. Industrial Light & Magic handled the motion-capture characters. Though primarily an animated film, the film does incorporate motion capture of live action humans in certain scenes.

It premiered in Japan on September 25, 2004, also premiered in Sundace Film Festival on January 28, 2006, and was theatrically released in Los Angeles on November 30, 2006, and on December 25 in the United States. The film was acclaimed by both critics and audiences, who consider it to be a landmark in filmmaking and the fantasy film genre, with praise for the visual effects, performances, action sequences, direction, screenplay, musical score, costume design and emotional depth. It grossed $434 million worldwide, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2006. After its success, the film was followed by four sequels: Sonic the Hedgehog: Battle (2009), Sonic the Hedgehog: Episode Metal (2011), Sonic the Hedgehog: Episode Shadow (2013), and Sonic the Hedgehog: The Final Adventure (2014).

Plot
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Cast

 * Ben Schwartz as Sonic the Hedgehog
 * Karen Bernstein as Miles "Tails" Prower
 * Dwayne Johnson as Knuckles the Echidna
 * Hannah Tointon as Amy Rose
 * Kathryn Newton as Cream the Rabbit
 * Elera Distler as Tikal
 * Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik / Dr. Eggman
 * Tyler Perry as E-102 Gamma
 * Ron Perlman as Chaos

Pre-production
In May 1999, Steven Spielberg, founder of Amblin Entertainment, first approached Paramount Pictures about adapting the 1998 video game Sonic Adventure into a film, after having seen other offers. Spielberg and Michael Bay decided to expand on the idea by incorporating a large-scale attack, with Spielberg saying he was bothered by the fact that "for the most part, in sci-fi movies, they come down to Earth and they're hidden in some back field …or they arrive in little spores and inject themselves into the back of someone's head." Bay agreed by asking Spielberg if arriving from across the galaxy for some island, "would you hide on a farm or would you make a big entrance?" On August 28, 2000, the two wrote the script, and just one day after they sent it out for consideration, Martin Scorsese greenlit the screenplay. Bay proposed the pitch to producers Andrew Kosove and Andrew Kosove, founders of Alcon Entertainment. Johnson then pitched Bay's idea to Paramount, whose executives liked the idea and commissioned Bay to write the script. Carin Sage at Creative Artists Agency read Bay's script and made Spielberg, who was one of the agency's clients, aware of it. At the same time, Kosove picked up the script and became interested in the film.

As Kosove explained climate change to Scorcese, he asked why a machine could not be built to fix that. Kosove went on to imagine such a thing, and how it could be used for evil purposes. As he struggled to develop his script, he asked the help of George Lucas, specially to write the brother dynamics. In December 2000, Bruce Berman, chairman and CEO of Village Roadshow Pictures also purchased the filming rights. A month later, after Paramount put the project into turnaround, Sonic the Hedgehog was pitched and accepted by Warner Bros.

Pre-production began just a month later in early February 2001. The U.S. military originally intended to provide personnel, vehicles, and costumes for the film; however, they backed out when the producers refused to remove the script's Area 51 references.

The film's aliens were designed by production designer Rick Carter. The actual aliens in the film are diminutive and based on a design Tatopoulos drew when tasked by Emmerich to create an alien that was "both familiar and completely original". These creatures wear "bio-mechanical" suits that are based on another design Tatopoulos pitched to Emmerich. These suits were 8 feet (2.4 m) tall, equipped with 25 tentacles, and purposely designed to show it could not sustain a person inside so it would not appear to be a "man in a suit".

Casting
Drake Bell was initially offered the role of Sonic the Hedgehog, but turned it down without reading the script. Chris Evans was also offered the role of Sonic, before Ben Schwartz was ultimately cast five or six months before filming began. Schwartz said "it all happened real quick. I hadn't reviewed the game, knew nothing about it, hadn't heard anything about it, and in a matter of weeks I'm working with Spielberg". Ellen Lewis, the film's casting director, felt Karen Bernstein would be the right choice to play Tails after reviewing the game. Jim Carrey also auditioned for the role. According to Lewis, Carrey "was terrific, too, but I think pretty quickly we all loved the idea of Dr. Robotnik", so he was cast.

Dwayne Johnson had previously worked on acting performance in The Scorpion King, and initially auditioned for the role of Knuckles the Echidna. Hannah Tointon was Spielberg's first choice for the role of Amy Rose though she was not the only actress offered the part. Robin Wright turned down the role. Elera Distler auditioned for the role of Tikal. Spielberg chose to cast Kathryn Newton as Cream the Rabbit since 2002. Tyler Perry also auditioned for the role of E-102 Gamma. Frank Welker was considered for the role of Chaos before Ron Perlman was chosen.

Filming
Principal photography began on November 4, 2002, in Vancouver, under the working title of Tsunami Battle, with scenes shot at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, inside BC Place, and at Hi-View Lookout in Cypress Provincial Park, West Vancouver (as San Francisco's Bay Area Park). This was followed by filming in the Richmond neighborhood of Steveston. A large battle scene was shot on Moncton St, involving approximately 200 soldiers and many military vehicles. Another scene was filmed at the fisherman's wharf along Finn Slough. Additional shooting took place on Vancouver Island, around Nanaimo and Victoria in British Columbia. Additional filming involving extras took place around industrial areas of Coquitlam, British Columbia. The following month, secondary filming took place about an hour outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the Butler area. A chase sequence was also shot in Worthington, Pennsylvania at Creekside Mushroom Farms, the world's largest single-site mushroom farm, which provided 150 miles of abandoned limestone tunnels 300 feet below the ground for filming. Filming took place in Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.

Production relocated to Chicago in February 2003, where filming took place in North Wells Street to be used in climactic battle scenes over a period of four weeks. Army Reserve soldiers assigned to the Columbus, Ohio-based 391st Military Police Battalion provided background action during the battle scenes in Chicago. Staff Sergeant Michael T. Landis stated the use of real soldiers made the scenes more realistic and helped portray the military in a more positive light, explaining that, "It's easy for us to make on-the-spot corrections to tactics and uniforms. The director actually took our recommendation on one scene and let us all engage the enemy as opposed to only the gunners in the trucks engaging". Filming also took place in the large vacuum chamber at the NASA Plum Brook Station near Sandusky, Ohio. The station's Space Power Facility was used to portray a G.U.N. research facility. A series of water explosions were filmed at the Market Street in San Francisco, as part of the battle sequence that began. Scenes from the film were also shot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

On May 18, 2003, the crew began shooting at Dominica, a location Verbinski had selected as he felt it fitted the sense of remoteness he was looking for. However, this was also a problem; the Dominican government were completely unprepared for the scale of a Hollywood production, as while the 500-strong crew occupying around 90% of the roads on the island they had trouble moving around on the underdeveloped surfaces. The weather also alternated between torrential rainstorms and hot temperatures, the latter of which was made worse for the cast who had to wear period clothing. At Dominica, the sequences involving Mystic Ruins (Angel Island) and the forest segment of the battle were shot. Bay preferred to use practical props for the giant wheel and bone cage sequences, feeling long close-up shots would help further suspend the audience's disbelief. Filming on the island concluded on May 26, 2003. The 10-month shoot proceeded as scheduled (From November 4, 2002), and concluded on September 6, 2003.

Post-production
Tom Ford served as the costume designer. He dressed the G.U.N. costumes in "police and military uniforms." Production designer Rick Carter built the sets at New York City, including Station Square segments. Although originally asked to use an existing old street to film the battle sequences, Ford decided to build his own set.

Bay originally planned to use both animatronics and CGI animation to create the water god and the mythical creatures, including the characters. Nick Dudman, who worked on both films, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), was given the task of creating the needed prosthetics, with Jim Henson's Creature Shop providing creature effects. John Coppinger stated that the mythical creatures that needed to be created had to be designed multiple times. The film features nearly 600 special effects shots, involving numerous companies. Sony Pictures Imageworks created the main characters, Rhythm & Hues animated Chaos; and Industrial Light & Magic produced the robots and chase sequences.

Music

 * Main article: Sonic the Hedgehog (soundtrack)

Marketing
The first trailer premiered in theaters on January 13, 2006 with the release of Hoodwinked!. Just four months later, another trailer was unveiled on June 9, 2006, and was attached to the screenings of Cars.

Theatrical
Sonic the Hedgehog was released theatrically in the United States on December 25, 2006. The theatrical release also included a sneak peek for Transformers. Promotional partners included Burger King, Dr Pepper, Kraft Foods, Kellogg's, and Embassy Suites Hotels.

Home media
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Reception
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Sequels
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Transcripts
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