2024 is going to be a big year for Sonic. Not only is Sonic X Shadow Generations landing on the Switch in Autumn, but fans will also be treated to the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie on 20th December and a dedicated Knuckles series later this month on 26th April (Paramount+).
Regarding the latter, franchise producer Toby Ascher recently spoke to Paste Magazine to describe how the Knuckles series came about and how the studio is leveraging these smaller projects to enable the Sonic movies to be 'Avengers-level' events.
Here's what he had to say:
“We got really excited about the idea of expanding our characters in our world into television, specifically, because it gives us a platform to really do character studies. We knew that, with Shadow coming into Sonic 3 and some of the bigger things that we want to do, the Sonic franchise on the movie side is going to be these Avengers-level events.
"They’re going to be these big, exciting stories that have a lot of different characters. And so what television did for us is it gave us time to go into some of the more supporting characters in depth and really build them out in cool ways.”
He also goes on to highlight how the third Sonic movie and the Knuckles series together form a cool easter egg for fans in that it's a similar setup to Sega's Sonic 3 & Knuckles. This Mega Drive / Genesis release back in 1994 allowed players to combine Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles together via a cartridge adapter to form one complete experience.
While one may scoff at Ascher's Avengers reference regarding the Sonic movies, you can see where he's coming from. Each film thus far appears to be expanding the character roster, and you certainly can't deny that the franchise has been a tremendous hit for Paramount Pictures, with the second movie making over $400 million at the global box office, becoming the highest-grossing video game movie in the US before The Super Mario Bros. Movie managed to dethrone it.