Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Movie Speeds Past $400 Million At The Global Box Office

Chris Pratt Mario, beat that!

I didn't enjoy this movie nearly as much as the first one, and neither did my kids. But we did go see it, so hey... they got their money.

I wonder if Sega got a fraction of those profits, if so they should really use those money to make better future Sonic games.

perhaps sega should focus on the sonic movie franchise and give the games a rest?

Haven't played the games, but me and my sonic-crazy friend love these movies and can't wait for 3!

I absolutely loved Sonic 2 and preferred it to the original. The chemistry between Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles was perfect and the ending was pretty high octane. Can't wait for the third movie.

W movie, runs laps around the original, which already was a solid movie, well deserved imo. Can’t wait for the third one!

Sonic’s popular with kids and is among the biggest selling game franchises, so makes sense

@Ryu_Niiyama
If Sega ran these movies this sequel would never exist, no matter the box offices numbers they’d make a vaguely related Sonic movie that goes in random new directions.

Disgusting era to live in when junk like this does so well and masterpieces like Everything Everywhere All At Once barely did $90 mil.

RIP art, consumerism is too strong a beast.

Awesome. Here's hoping that for the next movie, some of the female characters also make their debut. It's been a brofest until now.

@SteamEngenius
Everything Everywhere only cost 25m to make so it done really well so far, I haven't seen it yet but will definitely get it when its released on blu ray.

I never imagined a Sonic film would be more profitable than a film from the Harry Potter franchise.

Both Sonic 2 and Secrets of Dumbledore took similar amount in revenue but Dumbledore had double the budget of Sonic 2!

@SteamEngenius You're comparing a movie about an IP that had millions of fanbase to a movie about an IP that is just a start-up. Of course a movie with a no name IP like Everything Everywhere All At Once won't do as much, it's just a start-up IP, it's just starting to get a fanbase even though Michelle Yeoh of Tai Chi Master (with Jet Li) and Wing Chun (with Donnie Yenn) is in the movie.

@SteamEngenius Disgusting era?
Blockbuster, popcorn flicks have always outperformed niche titles financially.

Not sure what point you’re trying to make, as this really isn’t anything new.

@SteamEngenius That movie doesn't sound like a masterpiece based off the synopsis I just read.

Its well deserved I enjoyed this more than first movie and I felt first one just really generic with the plot but this is step up I can't wait for the third one.

Nice! Happy Birthday Sonic! And happy Origins release day everyone! Woot! Its a good time to be a Sonic fan

As for the film, I watched it multiple times in the cinema, and loved it! Its not perfect by any standards but the bits that are great are REALLY great. Now I have the digital version to watch at home I've watched it a few more times, though I skip through some of the slower or cringier bits to get to the gold. I have the Blu-Ray pre-ordered, of course

Its easily the best "live action" videogame movie I've seen. Of course, I'd love a new fully animated Sonic film - either high quality CG animation like in these films but with no "real world" elements and all in checkerboard Mobius style environments and all CG animal only characters, or the same thing but with high quality proper hand drawn 2d art, like the Tyson Hesse stuff.

I'll be interested to see how well the Illuminations Mario movie does. As an animated film with a cast of comedians it has potential to go full "zany game world" and be a lot of fun... but it also has potential to be awful, cheap and cringey. And from a box office perspective... I don't know. Arguably to a mainstream audience, these days Mario has more brand recognition and his face gets slapped on more stuff than Sonic, especially high profile things such as the Universal Theme Park stuff. However, I'm not sure that Mario (the character, NOT the games) has as rabbid a fanbase... its more like he's just a character everyone knows that represents a brand. Everyone knows Tony the Tiger but that doesn't mean a movie of him would attract audiences. I feel a lot of the success or failure of Mario's movie will be down to word of mouth as to if its good or not - similar to how despite being a brand that everyone knows, the Lego movie was a huge surprise hit because the fact it was far better than anyone expected turned it from an "oh, neat, maybe the kids might like it" into "wow I've got to see this!" prospect.

Well, I wonder what will be the plot for the third movie?

@SteamEngenius If it helps, because of its far lower budget both for production and P&A, Everything Everywhere made a far bigger profit for the investors and essentially green lights almost anything the writer, director or stars want to vehicle from it into.

I understand the feeling of despair that seems that modern cinema is losing artistic merit. But actual credible, original or artistic films are a completely different thing businesswise to a popcorn franchise film, and can't really be judged as such, its literally a completely different business model. The success of the artists working on the more interesting projects has little to do with the "box office" figure, and more to do with what percentage of profits were made from the investors - for example I made plenty of films with only $5k-30k budgets, which easily made 10x returns for the investors, which in turn guaranteed I could make more films outside of the studio systems (and therefore have complete creative control), pay everybody extrememly fair wages, and have fun making arsty stuff and touring film festivals and the like with people who cared about "film". Rinse and repeat and you start to network with more influential people, make friends with bigger stars, get a reputation for being reliable and honest, and if you want to, transition into making films with bigger budgets and stars, but still with less interferance as you can raise the budget from investors rather than the studios... and then just sell it to the studios to distribute after you've finished it. Thats how you make "art" but get it in cinemas - a completely different pipeline to the franchise stuff.

A blockbuster like Sonic 2 (or even more so the Marvel / Star Wars / Jurassic movies) may have a much bigger reported box office than an indie movie, but thats no indication of if they actually turned profit on the back end, they are actually enormous financial risks. I'm somewhat involved in that world having been developing a new superhero franchise since 2014 with people from a major company, I've seen (off the record) figures that would make your head spin. If I wasn't tied to NDAs I could rattle off a long list of titles that made $300 million to even nearing a billion box office and actually made a loss... these losses are expected and not particularly concerning because they are doing it as a loss-leader to build the overall franchise potential and brand recognition - think of smaller Marvel films building hype towards one of the big Avengers team-ups further down the line - and also hoping to sell a tonne of toys, merch, theme park tickets etc. and establishign the brand for sequels down the line. Its perfectly acceptible to lose $500 million because you spent so much advertising the heck out of the film to make sure everyone's now heard of it, because now you've added value to the IP. In fact, most film schools (or industry books) worth their salt will tell you to EXPECT for your film to lose money on the theatrical window. Its seen as a way to advertise the PPV, streaming, rental, TV sales, DVD windows. Almost all films lose money in the cinema, but its not reported to the public as that would break the mystique of "Hollywood glamour" that keeps the big boys in business.

❗️After watching the ATROCIOUS first film, I wo t see any others in this series.

I preferred 'Detective Pikachu' which I thought to be a genuine good film.

@BloodNinja Its exceptionally good - its one of those kinds of films you're better off not knowing much about it before you go in as its very difficult to adequately describe. Thats one reason they had such trouble advertising it. But it spread via word of mouth and also is cleaning up with awards, deservedly so imo.

But as per my rant above, they are completely different types of business propositions and a $90 million box office will have made a far bigger actual profit than Sonic's $400 million... if you only count actual ROI on the movie's theatrical release alone and don't factor in the Sonic movie's back end, residuals and franchise building / merch shifting profits. Theres even a chance that not even factoring ROI and just looking at the figures that the Sonic movie made less profit, if any. Paramount will only get 40-60% of that box office figure, and by the time you factor in the budget making the movie plus the money spent to advertise it, I'd hazard a guess they just about broke even, or made a small loss, whereas Everything Everywhere probably made $15-30 million in actual profit.

The difference of course, is they will have made waaaaay more selling Sonic plushies and the like, and will make far more money selling the rights multiple times over to different windows, and also just building the brand to profit off sequels, spin offs etc. Blockbusters are about the long game.

By extension, my fear for the Sonic franchise is that they will fall for teh trap of thinking that the third film needs an even bigger budget than the second. Taking that kind of risk will make it harder to turn a profit and jeopardise teh studio heads wanting to make another one. The sweet spot would be to keep the budget the same, or even go slightly lower (which would be easy to do and please fans by including more CGI characters and worlds and having less real life location shifts and big name stars - the brand is established now, its not as important). The secret to super long running franchises with a near endless stream of sequels over decades is keeping budgets comparitively low but quality high enough to please the core fanbase that you built with the first few. Too often the Hollywood system tries to go "bigger and better" with each one, and they usually burn out by the 3rd film, and many don't make it to 4.

Didn't think the first movie was good, it was pretty generic like most video game movies. If the second one shows up on Netflix, I will probably watch a bit to see if it's an improvement.

I'm both surprised... and thankful... that there hasn't been a video game adaptation of the film series yet

@sleepinglion I demand "Angry Lady in a Wedding Dress driving a Golf Kart" racing game! "Dance Dance Bruno Mars: Siberian Stage"! "SSX: Sonic Snowboarding Xtreme"! ...wait, that last one makes sense and could be fun! They even played "It's Tricky" in the movie...

@sleepinglion don't give Sega ideas...!

@Quarth Glad i'm not the only one who thought this!!
To me, the whole shoehorning in a plot involving human characters unconnected to the franchise is what made the first movie so average..

It makes you think who thought putting that in was a good idea; it's a Sonic movie, and should of been like a Saturday morning cartoon instead of putting in human characters nobody cares about...

@Andy77mk I totally agree, but that was partially a cost cutting exercise - generic real world locations and comparitively unknown human actors are easier and cheaper (for a simple film with few locations or action sequences) than entirely CGI locations and characters... but also there was the genuine concern from Paramount that Sonic wasn't a well known or popular enough character to get a mainstream audience... so they did the typical formula we've seen in generic but profitable family fare with "Chipmunks", "Garfield", Smurfs", "Marmaduke" etc. I enjoyed the first film for the portrayal of Sonic himself, but my main problem was how generic the human and buddy comedy/road trip elements were.

However, the fact the first film was so much more successful than they planned, allowed Paramount to feel more comfortable having a significantly bigger budget for the sequel, and also lean more into the Sonic characters and lore, fixing the problems with the first film in one fell swoop... but now the franchise was stuck with all these human characters from the first with nothing to do. Sending them away on holiday for a family wedding was a good idea to get around that issue... but why on earth we needed to actually go to the wedding and have so much of the film following that sub plot is beyond me. The human characters are likable and funny but are completely pointless and out of place. Its the only major weakness in the second film... other than the strangely over long "dance off" which I feel is another unfortunate "Chipmunks" style studio insertion to make it feel like other generic but profitable family movies.

@Serpenterror They need more than money to do that, maybe a time machine.

I shiggy diggy doo

@samuelvictor not seen the second movie yet - it’s on my radar, despite finding the first film average..

And you’re completely right - most ‘family’ franchises follow a very similar path - the recent TMNT movies did the same (controversial opinion though, I found Out Of The Shadows to be a lot of fun and quite a faithful representation of that big screen Saturday morning cartoon feel mentioned above)

I watched it with my friend, and it was a blast!

@jump still buying DVDs? Absolutely!

I’m of the older generation here (born in ‘84), and grow up with a love of physical media that’s never left me. I’ve got some 1,100 movies or so on DVD and blu ray, and love having an actual collection I can look at and browse.

Not to mention the amount of movies that I own that aren’t part of any streaming service, or having the freedom of being able to cancel any and every streaming service and be happy with the media I own on disc at home…

@jump The really weird thing is that in the last 2 years, over 80% of the DVDs of our movies have been sold to people who bought the same film on Blu-Ray at the same time... and most of these people also buy a digital download along with them if we do a bundle price. Nowadays I literally only release DVD versions of films because it means a huge number of the collectors who buy the Blu-Ray to put on the shelf will double dip... presumably both stay sealed and they watch the downloads? 🤔

@Serpenterror The problem with Sonic games is not money.

Stop thinking that you can solve all your problems with money, it's the same argument people use that "US$[X] billion could solve world hunger yet [rich guy] spends US$[X + Y] billion on [something trivial]", the problem of hunger is not money.

In recent years, DVDs and Blu-Rays became important again, thanks to so many movie companies screwing customers, so many movies and shows removed from streaming services thanks to legal issues, and thanks to so many classic movies and shows getting censored or even removed entirely, and streaming services only showing the censored versions.

They wanted to remove Donald Trump from Home Alone II, it didn't happen, but it could have happened, it doesn't matter if you like him or not, the movie is from 1992, Trump was president from 2017-2021, if that happened, there would be still millions of VHS tapes, DVDs and Blu-Rays with him.

Although I still defend that DVDs should have died already and completely replaced with Blu-Rays, just like VHS tapes were replaced with DVDs.

@Andy77mk Oh heck yeah, whilst I'm not always the biggest Michael Bay fan, the second modern Turtles movie was a million times better than the first and a lot more true to its roots, fanservicey in a good way.

I still hate the look of the CGI Turtles and Megan Fox is a strange choice for April (though she does seem to be a genuine Turtles fan and is proud of the films) but if you can get past that, the second movie is a fun time.

Another perfect example of the studio being hesitant with the first one, then adding a bigger budget and allowing more niche fan stuff in the sequel. Sadly, I think so many fans were burned by the first one that it underperformed and Paramount got cold feet after losing a chunk of change... though last I heard, Bay's Platinum Dunes are still developping a third live action Turtles films, but rebooting it rather than being a straight sequel, sort of like how Bumblebee was a similar but different take on their Transformers series. Hopefully they keep the good aspects of the second film.

There's another Turtles movie developped by Seth Rogen but thats completely different. From what I remember its animated, based on their early teen years, and probably releasing next year some time. Being his age and his history of optioning properties from the late 80s-early 90s for his vehicle projects, I'd assume the final thing will be very tied to the original show.

@victordamazio I didn’t see the original comment you’re replying to, but I respectfully disagree..

You can’t compare solving hunger with money to a company trading on the stock exchange. The ultimate purpose of Sonic video games is to increase shareholder value.

Publicly listed companies exist for the main part to serve the shareholders who own the business - everyone who works at Sega operates as an agent for the principals of the company, and it is in their interest to do what they do for money…

@victordamazio the thing with arguing that DVDs should disappear and be replaced by blu rays is that the market hasn’t entirely jumped on board - a lot of people don’t care THAT much in the jump from SD to HD to warrant buying a blu ray player or spending an extra 50% on a film (using Spiderman No Way Home as an example, where the DVD is £9.99 and the blu ray is £14.99)
Customers still get the advantages of what a disc based format brings over a VHS copy of a film - menus, extras, no need to rewind etc, and to many, they’re happy watching a DVD as the picture quality is still absolutely fine.

A lot of ‘casual’ viewers will find a cheap film on DVD in their local supermarket and take it home as a Saturday night watch with the family; I find it only tends to be people who are more into movies as a hobby would only accept blu rays.

For me, I have a mixture of both - I’m happy to buy older titles on DVD (& they’re so much cheaper it makes perfect sense to do so) and typically only get newer movies on blu ray or 4K blu ray.

@samuelvictor I heard about the Rogen project..will be interesting to monitor its progress.

I grew up watching the 80s TMNT show, so seeing Bebop, Rocksteady and Krang in a movie after waiting for so long (disclaimer - I absolutely love the original TMNT film and Secret of the Ooze was great fun too) felt like fan service - having a reworking of the original theme song in the end credits was fantastic too…

@Andy77mk Couldn't agree more with everything you just said. The two Henson Turtles movies are stunning. First one might be my favourite comic book adaptation of all time... and thats a controversial claim from someone who works with both Marvel and DC 😬

Such a shame the live action animatronic Turtles stuff took such a dive with the third film, not to mention the VHS specials, musicals etc, or even Next Mutation. People forget just how good the special effects in those first 2 films were. Just like the Jurassic Park series, often the animatronics and puppetry look far better than even most modern CGI.

@victordamazio but I’m glad to see another fan of physical media on the site! Like you said, many streaming services pull movies in and out of rotation as they please.

The only thing that irks me is when companies like Netflix or Amazon have their self produced exclusive movies, which then don’t get t released in a physical format.

I’ve also got a TON of TV boxsets, which is ever growing - been buying a lot of 60s/70s/80s/90s shows as of late (The Incredible Hulk, Baywatch, Cheers, Taxi, The Twilight Zone) and love the feel of adding to my collection..

@samuelvictor I hear you loud and clear on that!
Funny you should mention Jurassic Park - saw Dominion a couple of weeks back on launch weekend; it was enjoyable enough (not fantastic but better than Fallen Kingdom IMO and not worthy of the scathing reviews), but nothing can top seeing the T-Rex on the big screen for the first time as an 8 year old..

Been watching a fair bit of Dinosaurs recently as well re animatronics, and it looks fantastic to this day (as well as the comedy holding up well..)
The less said about Turtles In Time the better!

EDIT - Up until just now, I genuinely thought the third TMNT movie was subtitled Turtles In Time, when in fact it’s only the tag line (well, the tag line is ‘The Turtles Are Back…In Time’) I think the U.K. home release of the movie, and re releases in the US gave it the Turtles In Time subtitle..

@Andy77mk I'm a sucker for any film with big dinosaurs (or kaiju!) smashing things up, especially if they are interacting with people or modern civilisation settings. I was so hyped for Dominion because of the teasers and trailers showing dinosaurs in real world situations like terrorising cities, eating boats, attacking planes etc etc... but then it turns out that all of that is only used for a really short montage of news clips near the begining and 75% of the movie is just human characters talking to each other. Boo! lol.

But I am glad that in the most recent Jurassic World media (films and shows/web shorts etc) they've gone back to using animatronics and puppetry sometimes where possible. I certainly didn't hate the newest film, the dinosaur bits were great. Just needed more of that, and some real tightening of the scrpt and edit. Imo the first JP movie got the balance and pacing the best with the mix of action/wonder and human drama. And as you say, that scene with the T-Rex is just flawless filmmaking, and makes the very best use of both practical and visual effects, lit and shot extrememly intelligently to make the scene about as good as any film since.

And yes, the Henson Dinosaurs show had amazing suits and set design, and the writing is surprisingly clever satire with some truly moving parts that completely went over my head as a child. Holds up way better than most sitcoms of that era.

I just watched it last weekend. I think it's equal to the first movie. The series in general is good...not great....good.

@Andy77mk I'm not that much of a fan of physical media, while I get that it became important again, unfortunately, physical media has problems:

• It can be lost, broken or stolen.
• Even if you take care of it, it does not last forever, cartridges and discs will someday stop working.
• Recent discs are not made to last, made with cheap plastic.
• Preserving the software means nothing without the hardware to run it, many classic consoles and computers are breaking down and can't be fixed, not all consoles can have those clones.
• It takes space, not everyone can have shelves full of games, imagine arcades, most people can't have them at home.
• Older games can have physical copies around, but they may cost a fortune, maybe even more than a new current gen console, in recent years, videogame collecting became a very expensive hobby.
• In many cases nowadays, physical media is just a fancy digital purchase, you still need to make a download to play the good or complete version of the game, get DLC, play online, or just play at all, many games require a download even if you buy physical.

I decided to buy some digital games on GOG, and I am going to save them on USB Drives, homemade physical media, even if GOG shuts down, I still own those games.

Thankfully, many of these problems do not apply to movies, but still.

In the end, neither physical or digital media are good for preservation, the only option is piracy.

Wow, this comment section sure went all sorts of directions 😄

@victordamazio I hear you on the above - Extremely valid points in all of the above. I guess it’s a personal choice and I fully get that some people are less into physical media than others.

One other point you didn’t make is that often a game is released digitally long before a physical copy gets released - Shredders Revenge for example is out now on digital, but the boxed version doesn’t land until the end of next month. I’ve also been in the position in the past where I’ve held off buying a game I like the look of because it’s a digital only release in the hope a physical version will be announced..

For me, thankfully, I’ve had a tiny number of issues in the some 23 years since I first started buying DVDs, and all my old consoles, from the PS1, Dreamcast and GameCube up to modern hardware are still in good working order - obviously that’s not to say that they’ll carry on working forever, but time will tell on that.

For me, the negatives on digital only is the reliance on needing to be able to download or access a game, album or movie at any given time - if for instance you’ve brought a digital version of a movie and removed it from whatever device you use to watch it on, who’s to say that 20 years from now you’ll still be able to re-watch what you brought?

Although, as the same argument can be pointed towards owning a physical copy of the same film, I guess it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other and down to personal preference.

@victordamazio Also - one positive aspect of physical game biyong…If you’re not a collector per se, you can always resell old games online once you’ve done with them - you don’t get that option on a digital purchase.
Also - sometimes second hand purchases of games are a lot cheaper than the same price of the digital version. It also uses a lot less memory to store a game that’s (mainly) on a game card than it is to download the full file.

Also - it’s purely psychological, but I love the feel of playing a game on the original hardware with the original controllers over playing it on modern hardware. I know the games are the same, but the ‘feel’ of it is just so much more satisfying to me..

I loved it. Going into video game-based movies you can’t expect a cinematic masterpiece, but for Sonic movies, they’re just good fun. I’m glad they’re doing so well.

@victordamazio They need it so they could afford new engine to get Sonic games running smooth not to mention adding new features too otherwise we'll be playing boost games and more Frontiers like games gen after gen.

I love Sonic and all but I watch to see Jim Carrey as Robotnik. We know Shadow will be in the third movie but a little bummed because that probably means no Metal Sonic.

@solarwolf07 That might be the craaaaziest comment I've ever read on a gaming news website!

@samuelvictor Thanks for the recommendation. I’m not totally sold on it because I generally have a massive distaste for modern movies. Not trying to yuck your yum, I just know myself and know I probably won’t be into it.

@BloodNinja Hey no worries

ugly sonic should make a cameo 😁😆 in sonic 3 AHAHAHHAHA

@Bhuahahaha They won't be able to afford his fee after Chip & Dale made him a star!