One of Jeff Fowler’s first gigs in the industry was creating content for Sega’s ‘Shadow The Hedgehog’ videogame. Almost two decades later and he has three Sonic The Hedgehog live-action movies and a TV series, Knuckles, under his belt. The first two films are among highest grossing video game adaptations ever and the latest movie is tracking well. It’ll be in a holiday season box-office battle with Mufasa: The Lion King.
Keanu Reeves has joined the voice cast of the upcoming Paramount movie as a new adversary, Shadow the Hedgehog. Ben Schwartz is back as Sonic and Colleen O’Shaughnessey and Idris Elba return to voice his chums, Tails and Knuckles. Jim Carrey is in the live-action cast, reprising his Dr. Ivo Robotnik role, but also playing that character’s grandad, Gerald Robotnik.
Academy-Award nominated director and animator Fowler is on a whirlwind tour with the third Sonic, which is released on Dec. 20. During a London stopover, he sat down with Deadline to talk about the new movie, its starry cast, what might come next in the world of Sonic… and his special relationship with Shadow.
DEADLINE: This is the third movie outing for Sonic, how have you developed his character along the way?
JF: You have a talking hedgehog with superpowers and nothing could be more fantastic in terms of a proposition for a film. The most important thing is that it’s relatable, that he’s grounded in something that kids and families all around the world can connect with.
The first movie, treating Sonic like a kid who was just looking for friends and was feeling like an outsider… all of that is very relatable stuff. Once we had that, we knew what we could build it out in terms of his relationship with his parents, his needing to find people like him, and then with Tails and Knuckles, finding his squad and people that just get him. Once we had that template, it felt very natural to age him up from movie to movie, and to continue to throw challenges his way that would help his character develop.
DEADLINE: There’s a growing cast of characters from the games. What was the approach with the third movie?
JF: This third Sonic film is very much a love letter to ‘Sonic Adventure 2’ with a lot of those story points. We’re honoring what fans really loved about that game, but we never just do direct translations. Video games and movies are two different endeavors, and we also want to tell a story that people who are uninitiated will be invested in as well.
The second movie ended with Tails, Knuckles and Sonic making this vow to become this sort of squad and to use their powers to work together to help people and fight for good. In this film Sonic is settling into this leadership role. They have this team and they’re very capable, they’ve got very impressive powers, but there’s still an element of fun, and a kind of dysfunction amongst them in terms of who’s really in charge. Knuckles is a big personality and kind of thinks he should be calling the shots.
DEADLINE: The first two films were hits. But the journey wasn’t always smooth. There was pretty fierce fan pushback and then a character redesign. Three films in, how do you reflect upon the story so far?
JF: Every movie is going to face challenges and obviously we had some very public ones with the redesign, but all that stuff has just become part of our story. And it’s something that I sort of champion. We now have this amazing relationship with our fans. They obviously voiced some opinions, and those opinions were heard and addressed. It’s now just become part of this great relationship with them.
It’s amazing to me that we’re here on a third film, and we’ve made a TV series. I mean, Sonic 2 was made during a pandemic. Sonic 3, we had a writer strike, we had an actor strike. We have always found a way through.
DEADLINE: How did the strikes impact production?
JF: We had overlap with the end of our Knuckles shoot. We had wrapped filming, and we were getting very close to starting filming on Sonic 3 and then the actors’ strike hit in mid-July. We already had our draft completed for the film so we actually weren’t affected by the writers’ strike.
When that actors’ strike began, we had a whole lot of visual effects work to do on Knuckles. Rather than my visual effects supervisor and our whole team having to run off to start working on the film, we were able to focus a little bit more on Knuckles and on the animation for that and wait for the strikes to play out. Fortunately, eventually that all resolved itself. By late November we were able to get going on the movie.
DEADLINE: There’s a great full-circle moment when it comes to Shadow the Hedgehog. I hear you two go back a long way?
JF: This is something that’s very personal to me. I got hired by Tim Miller [co-founder] of Blur Studio after it had been hired by Sega to create cinematics to promote the game ‘Shadow the Hedgehog’. I was on the team that created this first footage of Shadow riding a motorcycle, kicking ass, and using his powers. This is probably 2004, so now, 20 years later, to be responsible for introducing the world to Shadow on the big screen, it’s incredible. It’s almost impossible to wrap my head around.
What’s most exciting about bringing Shadow into our movies is he’s a complex character. He has a backstory that is very different from Sonic’s. Sonic very much got a happy ending, and he found friendship and family. Shadow had that for a time, but then it was all taken for him.
DEADLINE: What did you want from Keanu Reeves when it came to Shadow?
JF: The tone of the film opened up to tell a different type of story and we needed an actor who could really handle that. Whereas Ben [Schwartz as Sonic] is about motormouth fun and manic energy, Shadow is the exact opposite. Sonic is saying 100 words a minute while Shadow might say five words in an hour. He’s a much more closed book, more mysterious, brooding. It’s this kind of yin and yang with Shadow and Sonic. There’s a really great opportunity, narratively, to have an almost bizarro version of that Sonic origin story.
Keanu just brings so much to it. He has an ability to channel that complexity and a little bit of that danger and darkness, but still be likeable, because Keanu, in all his performances, he’s just a very likeable actor. That’s what we needed for Shadow, that complexity, that intrigue and something to just make him feel very different from Sonic. Keanu was absolutely perfect in that regard.
DEADLINE: Jim Carrey is back and you’re working him hard, he’s playing two characters this time?
JF: He works himself that hard. I learned that on the first film. He knows people are showing up to see him and he wants to deliver.
One of the first conversations I had with Jim was: ‘We have an opportunity to do something we’ve never been able to do before, what if we explore family from Robotnik’s point of view?’ All we know about Robotnik is he’s an orphan. He was a social outcast very early in his life and retreated into the arms of technology, but what if a grandfather walked into his life one day?
When it came to filming, nothing could be a bigger ask of an actor than playing two sides of the same scene. We started with the first meeting between Ivo and Gerald, which is probably the hardest scene in the entire movie because it has the most dialog. It’s also the most important in terms of getting the audience to buy in on the concept. Once we had that it was like: ‘Okay, this is gonna work and it’s gonna be great.”
DEADLINE: Are you seeing your fanbase grow up as the movies progress, how do you factor that in?
JF: We’re so proud of how simple and sweet that first film was. As we add in more characters and it grows and evolves in tone from film to film, our stories have grown up with the kids and with the audience. It’s obviously something that Harry Potter did, we’re not the first ones to do it, but I think that’s a great comparison. It’s about the needs and the sensibilities of that group of fans who saw the first film.
DEADLINE: You have, thus far, introduced new characters from the Sonic universe at the end of the movies, can we expect more of the same?
JF: We’ve ended every one of these films with a tease of new characters. Marvel has done this for many, many years, it’s not something we invented. This third film is no different. I can’t wait to pop my head into the end of the movie, just to see the response.
There are so many great characters. It’s an embarrassment of riches. It’s fun to watch the speculation. We look at it all the time to see who people are rooting for, who they want to see. There’re still some great names on that list.
DEADLINE: We’ve had the Knuckles series. With a growing cast of characters on screen, do you see spin-off potential?
JF: When we wake up on December 21 and see how the world has responded, then we’ll start having those conversations.
It’s a real challenge though. You introduce new characters, and the audience fall in love with them. You fall in love writing for them. Then the next movie comes along and there’s another new character. You’re juggling more and more and so by proportion, each character’s role gets a little smaller. So, to have the opportunity to do dedicated spin-offs and give the characters that deserve them additional stories, it’s always something worth looking at.
DEADLINE: The forecasts are good, there are some other big movies launching over the holidays. Wicked and Moana 2 fared well. There has been some good news of late when it comes to moviegoing.
JF: This last Thanksgiving was just such an incredible display of support and love for theaters. I root for all movies. I love the theatrical experience. There’s nothing like being in a crowd on opening weekend with a bunch of people who are as every bit as excited as you are about what you’re about to see.
It was wonderful to have a moment like we just had with this Thanksgiving and hopefully we’ll have with Christmas. It’s just an absolute validation that theaters are here to stay, and something that should endure because it’s such a unique experience.
