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James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 12:42 am
by cjmcray
So this happened.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat- ... en-1115976

Um.

I don't know what to think. If it's adapting Sonic Adventure, then great. If it's like Hop or Peter Rabbit (Both of which Marsden has starred in) then.. Eek.

It's also rumored that Jack Black or Owen Wilson will have roles but that isn't finalized.

http://www.tssznews.com/2018/05/30/paul ... ovie-lead/

On the plus side, the production team has worked on big budget action films like Deadpool, Fast & the Furious, and just recently Stephen Windon signed on to be cinematographer (He's worked on Star Trek: Beyond, and GI Joe: Retaliation)

http://www.tssznews.com/2018/05/30/cine ... tion-team/

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 5:48 am
by Wombatwarlord777
I find it odd that the production team is apparently so experienced when the director's own filmography is really fucking thin. I don't want to read too much into this, but couldn't they have gotten somebody with relevant experience within the last ten years? All the talent in the world doesn't matter if you can't coordinate it well. I dunno, hopefully the myriad of producers will have a steadying hand in this thing.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 3:30 pm
by Gaz
https://deadline.com/2018/06/jim-gianop ... 1202406289
Gianopulos was sold on Sonic‘s story. “He’s a juvenile delinquent on the adventures in a pretty straight rural environment with a local policeman. It was instantly engaging and it was good enough where you could see where it’s going,” he said.
Yeah, this film is sounding like total garbage(not that I'm surprised).

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 5:17 pm
by Wombatwarlord777
Huh. Weirder things have happened, I guess.

Obviously nobody involved in this thing has any idea about Sonic's lore aside from what they might have picked up through pop culture osmosis (hedgehog that runs fast and beats up robots), so at this point I think an adaptation of an existing story is out of the question.

So this thing basically has to stand up on it's own two legs. I'm actually more willing to give it the benefit of the doubt now that it's not heavily attached to any existing aspect of the franchise. Besides, the premise they've stated here could work for a dumb little kids' film. Who wouldn't want to see Sonic and his motly crew of teenaged friends bored out of their skulls in rural West Virginia decide to fuck around with Sheriff Eggman for kicks? And Sheriff Eggman decides to up his game by modifying his police cruiser with rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and buzzsaws? Seriously, sign me the fuck up for this beautiful dreck.

I think it helps that Sonic already has so many officially licensed continuities that really aren't much less outlandishly bizarre than that.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:16 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
Well, yeah, if it's going to be a bastardization, then better to be the most batshit crazy bastardization it can be. The Super Mario Bros. movie is like some funhouse mirror reflection of a renowned property with a patina that could only come from that particular era. Lord knows if Illumination's presumably fidelitous Mario adaptation will be anything worth remembering.

The director is responsible for that Where The Wild Things Are movie? That was fucking weird. If it's more like that and not Gopher Broke the better.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:09 am
by Tsuyoshi-kun
I suspect Illumination's Mario movie will be colorful and look likely and fairly accurate to the current CG art, most likely due to Nintendo mandates that everyone has to be on-model now. But I don't expect it to be much more than painless at best.

I'm still waiting on whatever actor they'll cast as Sonic. That would make or break it to me more than any live-action stuff would.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:46 pm
by Yami CJMErl
Wouldn't they just use his current VA? It seems like it'd be the easiest route...

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:18 am
by Wombatwarlord777
Local hedgehog makes shitty movie, dicks around with Wisconsin town
At long last, we know the plot of the Sonic movie:

Paramount Pictures is budgeting upwards of $7-million for a film shoot later this year that will set a computer-generated hedgehog with supersonic speed loose on the streets of Ladysmith.

“We searched all over B.C. and have chosen Ladysmith as our hero town for our movie,” said Abraham Fraser, the location manager for the film.

Filming will take place starting in mid-September for somewhere in the range of eight to 11 days along First Avenue, between Roberts Street and Gatacre Street.

“For the majority of our filming we would require to close the block entirely…with the hopes of doing intermittent traffic control,” Fraser said, adding how there would be upwards of six days of shooting overnight.

The movie’s plot is about a small town coming together to help the sheriff save Sonic – a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog that can reach the speed of sound – from the government chasing after him.

As part of the Sonic the Hedgehog shoot, Bayview Framing is set to become the police station in the movie and the Top Drawer Consignment store next door will be transformed into a donut shop.

The Sonic film has budgeted $300,000 for any loss of business and recouping costs would involve filling out a form available through the Creative BC website.

“I certainly don’t feel that any small business should be funding any feature film and so if they’re losing money we have to compensate them for that,” Fraser said.
This is sounding less and less like a respectable film production and more like your dipshit second-cousin's shitty indie film attempt.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:51 am
by Dr. BUGMAN
Yeah, barely a fortnight? Sounds exceedingly brief for a major motion picture, more like a Roger Corman schedule.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 11:04 am
by G.Silver
Well, this is just one location and it's a town that people actually live in, they can only disrupt that for so long. I don't know what's standard for these kinds of things but it makes sense to me that they'd quickly gather all the footage they can as quickly as they can and shoot the rest in studio sets and other locations where they can have more control. When they say "the majority of our filming" they're surely talking about the filming for this location specifically.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:18 pm
by Wooduck51
Is SEGA literally run by people from bizarro world? Every time, from sonic heroes onward (maybe excluding sonic 2006) they just take potentially great ideas.. and run them into the fucking grroouunndd For whatever reason I have been thinking about how much potential was squandered with Sonic Heroes and Forces, and then they have both Sonic adventures to adapt into potentially fantastic movies, and then they pull this snafu. Now obviously this could suprise everyone and turn out to be a swell little movie, but sweet buttered biscuits why has Sonic been cursed such?

At least everyone who is responsible for these decisions will probably die before I do, so I may live to see greatness in my geriatric years

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 1:02 am
by big_smile
https://twitter.com/deadline/status/101 ... 61825?s=21

Jim Carrey will be playing Dr Robotnik (It doesn't look like they are going with Eggman).

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 1:05 am
by big_smile
Carrey's involvement certainly has raised some eyebrows.

I was meaning to post this before his casting, but I don't think the plot of the movie is bad. To your average movie watchers, Sonic has all the story of Tetris. They probably remember the 'Hedgehog with Attitude' slogan from the nineties, so having him as a delinquent probably fits in well with that. All the stuff we know about Sonic's story is probably foreign to most people this film is aimed at.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 2:12 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
Alrighty then.

Carrey can certainly do dangerous loony manchild well, but he's a tad on the svelte side for Eggman however. Will they stick him in a fatsuit, I wonder.

If I had any editing skills and the wherewithal I'd edit Carrey's famous soundbites into preexisting Eggman video.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 3:52 pm
by Wombatwarlord777
If the concept is Sonic coming to the real world, I'm honestly surprised Eggman isn't CGI'd as well. The way he looks in Sonic '06 notwithstanding, I'd expect that since he (assumingly) also comes from Sonic's world that he'd maintain his cartoony appearance to distinguish himself from normal live-action humans.

I do feel pretty bad for Mike Pollock, if I'm being honest, although maybe he'll dodge a bullet if this endeavor bombs. At this point I'm curious if they'll have Roger Craig Smith or any of the other VAs reprise their usual roles, or if they'll hire whatever B-list celebrities they can afford.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 7:10 pm
by Frieza2000
My immediate assumption when I heard that Sonic was on the run from the government was that he's an escaped genetic experiment and Robotnik is a military scientist in charge of the project. There might even be a nod to the old Kintobor material if they want to give him an origin beyond "obese mad scientist."

Anyway, there was never any chance of this being good, but we can at least hope to get some good memes out of it. Casting Jim Carry as the villain will materially improve our chances.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 8:25 am
by Dr. BUGMAN
Oh yeah, totally forgot Carrey is (or maybe was; dunno if he recanted) an anti-vaxxer. So he might actually be too evil to play eggman. Though it might explain how they can afford him.

Also, someone should superimpose eggman's head into that scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where Carrey jerks it to furry porn.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:00 am
by Dr. BUGMAN
Image

oh...

(But in seriousness, as bad as Shadow was in, in addition to other many, many respects, its story scenes, I do rather like the stretch and squash featured therein. Wonder if that was due to him.)

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 3:02 pm
by Wombatwarlord777
Honestly, Shadow's prerendered cutscenes were great, especially for the time. At least when it comes to Sonic, it seems like SEGA in the 2000's was very much style over substance, but that's not to say that nothing without merit ever came from that.

I feel like I might have been a bit harsher on Jeff Fowler than I probably should've been earlier in this thread. It looks like he also did work for Sonic 2006's cutscenes, which were also pretty great. Is it IMDB's policy not to include work on other media like video games? I guess you've got to draw the line somewhere, but you're excluding a lot of credits that way.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:19 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
IMDb seems to feature only voice- and/or mocap actors for video games, or at least the people who edit the site tend to prioritize them.

And, yeah, like I said: the animation for Shadow was adequate absent everything else. '06 on the other hand was full of stilted movements for the characters as far as I can remember? Like they were mocaping the nonhumans? I dunno, the part in the beginning where Sonic whooshes a bunch of badniks was sorta passable.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2018 8:25 am
by big_smile
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2018/07/06/the- ... r-got-made

It seems Sega were trying the Sonic movie thing back in the 90s. It was planned to incorporate elements from Sonic Xtreme and even the old Sonic Mary Garnett story with Sonic coming in the real world to stop Dr Robotnik from building an evil theme park. It was killed off by Sega Japan who, for some reason, wanted another villain in place of Eggman.
Sounds awful, but it's an interesting read.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2018 2:36 pm
by G.Silver
Little rumors about this were circulating all through the 90s, I'm sure I recall lots of magazine articles with various Sega reps saying that a movie was in the works, but never with any details like that. It's cool to see something more about it, except of course that it sounds awful. Can't say how it would have performed of course but it sounds like something I would have hated. The whole "character comes out of an actual video game" trope really feels to me like something only people who don't understand the appeal of the video game in the first place would write.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2018 5:50 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
Character coming out a game was present in both the Mario and Mega Man OVAs, but the Mario one was a little more ambiguous with the brothers entering Peach's kingdom via pipes natch. The Mega Man OVA I think was funded by Japan's council of tourism because it was a blatant travelogue. I think Nintendo was reluctant to tether Mario to any established mythos at that point, suggested by Peach being betrothed to some rando and also the existence of Daisy early on in Super Mario Land fulfilling an identical role; and Pauline being a damsel-in-distress prior to either of them.

Whatever the case, this lady seems incredibly out of touch in what boys find enjoyable. Seems like the typical pushy mom who waltzes into a board meeting and fucks with someone's ideas in the worst way possible. I bet she bought her kids "No Fear" shirts.

Also, the test pilot is based on a historical event but the kid uses a Sonic X-treme game disc for the whatsit? How does that make any sense? Am I missing something?

How canonical is the test pilot story, anyway?

Oh and:
Image

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:51 pm
by cjmcray
Wow. That movie sounds unbelieveably bad. And a Sonic Xtreme tie in too? That very well could have killed the entire franchise if it was ever released.

Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog mov

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 7:38 am
by big_smile
I doubt it would have killed anything. Sonic (and Sega) had pretty much dropped out of the average public's consciousness by the time X-treme rolled around as the Saturn was getting out-shadowed by the Playstation and N64.

If anything, a movie might have showed people that Sonic was still a thing.