#alan denton

[nia1sworld]

The Hunicast part 2

[aawesomepenguin]

Patrick Casey and Josh Miller (the writers of the Sonic Movie) recorded a podcast with Alan Denton (one of the writers of Sonic Boom) for the Best Movies Never Made! In it, they talk about their experiences of writing for the blue hedgehog.

It’ll be avaiable on January!

[blazehedgehog]

We should be seeing that Sonic movie redesign very very soon! Do you think the redesign was a smart move or they should have stuck with their guns and embrace their true creative vision? I’d feel if they were confident they wouldn’t feel the need to do it but we’ll see. We Sonic fans gonna watch it in the cinema regardless.

I don’t know if we know what the “true creative vision” is on this movie.

Because you have to remember, it was originally announced, in, like… 2013? 2014? With a totally different director, at a totally different studio. A lot of this movie’s identity changed multiple times over the course of production.

That’s the thing you have to realize with this kind of movie. It’s not that somebody comes to a studio and says, “I’d like to make a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, here’s my script, here’s my budget, let’s do this.”

When it comes to Garfield, or the Smurfs, or Alvin & the Chipmunks, or whatever, usually it’s more about a creative team looking at charts and mapping trends and saying, “If we spent this much money, what could we license to turn a profit?” That list is whittled down until they find what they want to license.

After it’s decided at this corporate level that they want to make a movie, they go looking for a director and a production team and whatever. It’s almost the inverse of how you’d think movies get made. It’s less “I have a good idea for a nice movie” and more “I have a profitable idea for a cash cow.”

So, you know, in 2014 or whatever when Sony originally greenlit this movie, Sonic was in a more interesting place. It was the beginning of a transitional period – Sonic Generations had renewed a lot of good will for the franchise, Sega was trying to revitalize the brand with Sonic Boom, they were signing exclusivity deals with Nintendo, the snarky social media was ramping up, it was all moving and shaking. Quality or not, a lot of people were talking about Sonic.

Sony’s executives saw a chance to work their way in to that chaos, and they took it. Unfortunately, Sony’s movie division was in the crapper back then after a never-ending string of failures (Ghostbusters, etc.) so they figured Sonic was a noose around their neck and sold it to Paramount. It was always just a piece of property; a machine that signs checks. When they began to doubt its ability to do that, they got rid of it.

That’s not to say these movies are staffed by people who don’t care. Nobody wants to do a bad job. Their ability to put food on the table every night hinges on them doing good enough work to be hired for the next five projects, so they WANT it to succeed. But there is still kind of an assembly-line nature to these sorts of things where an artist will pitch ten different versions of the way a character looks and the winning design will be the one that’s easiest to make in to an action figure. 

And at every public-facing level, people have to look totally confident in their work, even if market forces are conspiring against them. The artist might like Design C, but three groups of focus testers liked Design F. Maybe those focus testers are wrong! Sometimes that happens! But when you’re trying to gauge what will make the most money and appeal to the widest audience, you have to go with Design F. That’s the peril in all of this, but you can’t ever let the public know that.

Because there are so many layers of pretending everything’s okay when it might not actually be okay, it’s incredibly difficult to know just what the “true creative vision” for this movie actually was. That’s part of the reason it’s so interesting they allowed it to change at all, because this is very, very unprecedented.

Will it make for a better movie? I have my doubts. It will look less horrifying, sure, but what if there’s more wrong with it than just the way Sonic looks? I don’t think they’re doing reshoots or recording new lines of dialog, they’re just replacing Sonic’s visuals.

So, we’ll see. Even changing Sonic’s look could be profit-focused; something made to salvage merchandising more than anything.

[that-damn-fourth-chaos-emerald]

Life imitates art.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/dreamboat-express/1313351458

[cgmayra]

I original wrote, “As a writer, I appreciate this.” When he mentioned my favorite part of the new Sonic Boom Vector Detector Episode, at the stakeout.

[that-damn-fourth-chaos-emerald]

So this happened this morning

[cgmayra]

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You Tease and When your appreciation starts a trend

[ankle-beez]

I love the Sonic Boom crew so much