Hello and welcome to How Did This Not Get Made?
This is the podcast all about the movies that were never made, the scripts that were never
written and the ideas that never even made it to the page.
My name is Daniel Kawka and I'm Lexcee Riley.
[Applause]
Welcome back to part 2 of our Sonic the Hedgehog episode.
If you have not listened to part 1, I highly recommend listening to that first before diving
into this episode so that everything that we talk about just makes sense.
And for those who listen to part 1, enjoy the rest of the story.
[Music]
MGM in Trilogy Entertainment, they're still having production meetings about how we're
going to make this movie, what to do, what's established.
It's all confusing but after multiple pre-production meetings, they finally hashed out a 30 page
treatment submitted on November 11th, 1994.
Now the treatment and I think in why suspect it was like 30 pages, it was not written by
a screenwriter.
It was written by two producers.
It was the Trilogy Entertainment founder, Penn Denchham and Richard B. Lewis.
I mean treatments can really run the gamut so I'm not like that doesn't seem too insane
to me but that's interesting.
Yeah.
Before diving into the story, it starts off with a disclaimer.
Always great.
For lack of a better word.
At the beginning of the treatment, this is word for word what it says.
This is a fake story.
Yes.
Intellying this origin interpretation of the Sonic story, we are attempting to introduce
a new mythology to the movie going audience.
We ask you to keep in mind that we are selling a live action movie to a broad family audience,
many of whom have never played the Sonic game before.
For this reason, we believe that the Sonic movie should be a Genesis story and as we discussed
in our various story sessions, we'll involve a teenage boy who transforms into the Sonic
character.
This transformation will utilize multiple film elements including live action, full-motion
animatronics and puppetry in state-of-the-art computer generated images, somewhat darker and
edgier in tone than the existing video game.
There should be a strong sense of real jeopardy.
As done effectively in both Batman and Jurassic Park, our adventure should be capable of
providing wonderful entertainment with Sonic and his friends being an integral part of the
movie going experience.
No thank you.
Why make him a kid?
Like that is such an unnecessary plot.
Right off the bat, you're basically telling anyone who's going to read this to be like,
it's going to be bad.
Do you have to have a paragraph explaining what the movie is about?
Because that's not a disclaimer, like that's not a warning.
No, that's why I said like lack of a better word.
Yeah, like there's not a good thing to say that other than this is the exposition before
the exposition before the exposition.
Before you set your expectations really high, I ask you, what if you just like set them
really low?
Listen, some people didn't watch the video game so we've got to make, you know, the regular
people understand.
That's true.
But even the regular people are going to be confused so we're going to add a paragraph
before.
Yeah.
And dive into this 30 page treatment, I'm not going to read all 30 pages of it.
I actually did a summary.
I was like, we don't have enough battery for this.
Oh, no, no.
But before we get into this treatment, let's get into the treatment of these advertisements.
And welcome back to the dog cast all about dogs.
What are they up to?
What do they see?
What does he smell?
Major FOMO.
You'll hear him in the background.
He's doing just fine.
He just wants to be in the room where it happens.
Don't we all?
All right.
Let's get into this treatment.
The film opens on a man being chased through the jungle by snakes with wolf-like heads.
You took a drink at the wrong time.
I did.
I really did because I didn't see that coming so quickly.
What a fool.
He's caught and dragged into a pit of pulsating, low-ing fungi.
A two-headed creature approaches him and the scene cuts when the man begins to scream.
We match cut to Jimmy Hedgeman, a 17-year-old miles away screaming while joy riding to impress
his friends in the car with him.
He's pulled over by a cop and now this is his third violation.
As he's trying to talk his way out of another ticket, he opens his club compartment and an
empty beer can because friend was drinking, falls to the floor.
His friend was drinking?
Yes.
He's taken to the police station.
At the police station, Jimmy reluctantly calls his father to get him.
Dr. Hedgeman leaves his laboratory where he's working on a government-funded experiment to
unlock the mysteries of the DNA puzzle.
Jimmy and his father drive in silence back to the lab at Stanford.
Dr. Hedgeman tells Jimmy to stay at his desk while he continues to work.
We see Jimmy wearing a bomber jacket that reads Sonic or bust on the back.
Okay, this is my favorite part of this treatment so far.
On his father's desk, Jimmy notices a framed photo of his grandfather wearing the same jacket.
Okay.
Standing next to an aircraft.
Jimmy gets bored and wanders into the lab.
Jimmy pulls a hedgehog named Squeakers out of the cage to play with and is yelled at by his
father to put him back.
Don't touch that.
The two begin to argue in his father rhetorically asks him when he's going to grow up.
On one point, they bring up Jimmy's grandpa stating, "Hedgemans always make their mark."
My grandfather was killed trying to break the sound barrier trying to leave his mark.
Dr. Hedgeman threatens to send his son to military school and is interrupted by a phone call.
Jimmy storms out of the building.
As he exits, he passes by three men pretending to be maintenance workers, be lining it to
the lab.
The main man is known as the "face" who has a severe skin condition that makes him
look like his skin is dripping off of his face.
No thank you.
And if you're wondering if this is part of the Sonic Cannon, yes, not.
They made it up for the movie.
Hedgeman is also not a name that we've...
Okay.
I was like, we're creating another doctor.
We created a lot of characters in the first ten minutes of the movie.
I'm on board.
I like the jacket and I like the picture of it.
I like all of that.
Yeah.
Will it come up again?
I mean, it doesn't need to necessarily come up again if this is like the intro before
the credit.
Yeah.
Will the Hedgeman, they confront Dr. Hedgeman and ask if they will work for their boss with
unlimited funds and a new lab?
The doctor says no.
Meanwhile, Jimmy outside of the building realizes he forgot his backpack and returns to
the lab.
He sees the threatening man and hides in a large cabinet.
He sees one of the men pull out a gun and Dr. Hedgeman knocks over the cabinet that Jimmy
is in, not knowing that his son is hiding in there and attempts to run away but is quickly
subdued.
Jimmy is trapped inside the cabinet and notices that he's been stabbed by a piece of glass
and blue liquid starts to seep out of his wound.
What?
He pulls out the glass, feeling sick and his vision begins to blur.
Oh, this is the key, but yeah.
He manages to get free and sees his dad is being taken away by three men.
We cut to the police station where Jimmy tries to explain the situation but his speech becomes
incredibly fast and now the police are suspicious of him.
Jimmy leaves the station and the police chase after him.
Jimmy and the police are in a high speed car chase as Jimmy drives.
We see that he's still feeling sick and his hair begins to turn blue.
Jimmy crashes into a police car as he gets out.
He runs from the scene in a blink of an eye.
It's 3 a.m.
And Jimmy runs to the house of his Spanish teacher, Mrs. DeHammer.
Wow, we are hard laughs all over the place.
And it's like we can either make the right decision, the wrong decision or do whatever
the hell we want.
Or no decision at all.
He explains what happens and she tells him to stay with her.
From Jimmy's story, she guesses that these men were Peruvian and shows him on a map where
that is.
While Jimmy figures out where his father might be, Mrs. DeHammer calls the police.
Jimmy hears Mrs. DeHammer on the phone and realizes who she's calling.
He grabs the map and runs out the door.
Meanwhile, Dr. Hedgman comes face to face with a man who kidnapped him.
The legendary, reckless scientist and doctor.
Which one is it?
Paul Ellison.
Oh my god!
It's not any of them!
I know.
You literally have three different doctor's names you can pull from.
And they chose none of them.
At this point, we're like a couple pages into the treatment.
There are two.
You added four zero reason and a Spanish teacher.
Yeah.
For no reason.
I don't know why.
I'm Buckleman, can you help me?
Dr. Ellison, he is famous for making synthetic blood.
Of course he is.
For the last decade, he was presumed dead.
And Dr. Ellison goes through his evil villain monologue on how he was born without fingers.
And he took up violin and he was known as the "fingerless, virtuous so."
People would watch him play simply out of pity.
This is supposed to be a children's movie, huh?
But darker.
While telling his story, Ellison removes his fingers from his hands and the fingers crawl
towards Hedgeman and climb up onto his face and begin to suffocate him.
The fingers release him before any serious damage is done.
Ellison tells Hedgeman that he needs him to eliminate the world's fragilities so that humanity
may live in harmony.
This is again supposed to be a children's movie.
I'm a fan of horror and even I'm like, "Mmmmm."
And while G pretending to be his father, books of flight to South America.
Hold up, hang on.
Jimmy, who is talking like he said a thousand cups of coffee and his hair is turning blue,
is trying to leave the country posing as his father.
Well when he books the flight, he says that he's his father.
I mean if you have to use this credit card.
So many issues with this movie already.
While on the plane, his palms begin to turn blue.
Plums are sweaty.
He rushes into the bathroom causes Mr. Bean levels of commotion and tries to play cool
when he gets out.
I have my father, I swear.
After the plane lands, he finds some locals that will charter a boat to an island where he
believes his father is located.
He's mugged and thrown into the river.
He miraculously survives and finds himself on an unknown jungle island in the middle of
the night.
Back with an uncontrollable hunger, he starts eating worms.
He sees his reflection in the water.
He's some kind of strange animal.
He climbs up into a tree and throws up and turns back into human Jimmy.
Oh my god.
On the ground he's knocked out and dragged away.
Jimmy wakes up strapped to a stretcher.
He meets a half-girl, half-wild woman named Amanda Morgan, another name made up.
She's surrounded by other mutant creatures.
One of the creatures named Kentar cuts some loose.
Kentar is a massive creature with huge paws.
Oh, nope, not where I thought I was going.
Dreadlocks and long arms that cause his hands to drag on the ground.
Jimmy nicknames him Knuckles.
So we just smashed together, canter and knuckles.
Okay, that's actual lore.
I'm okay with it.
My favorite part of doing this research is I was going off of the treatment that was a
PDF scan of one of the producers.
What I loved about it is that there were also notes in there.
So they went through the whole description of the canter and then revealed that it was
Knuckles.
Then in the notes was like, why not just make them look like Knuckles?
We have the character there.
Why change him?
I love that that's the note.
I love that whoever wrote that note, I'm right there with you.
Yeah, like the whole time he's just like unnecessary, boring, what's happening?
Oh, my God.
I want to read the notes.
It's pretty great.
So wait, canter, cantober, who's robot?
Kentar.
But that's it is the same name, correct?
Not Kentober.
Oh, so it's not.
No.
Kentar, K-E-N-T-A-R.
And Kentober are two different.
Very different.
It's robot nicknames backwards.
Right, right, right.
You can't do that.
It is very confusing.
Just a knuckles.
Yeah.
Jimmy is taken to the mutant village where they meet the village elder Taticus.
New character number 75.
Taticus is not a fan of Jimmy and he gives the others permission to kill him.
But Amanda stands up for him and asks to give him another chance.
Jimmy is spared and Amanda continues to care for him.
She calls him Sonic because that is what is on his jacket.
All right.
I mean, we're going back to the original war, so sure, sure.
The next day, Jimmy works with knuckles to try and transform.
The two fight and knuckles is clearly stronger.
Jimmy finally transforms when knuckles holds his head underwater and he nearly drowns.
Knuckles is a jerk.
Jimmy's hair turns blue and bursts out of the water.
Sonic the hedgehog.
He is now stronger than knuckles and overtakes him.
The fight is interrupted when two attack helicopters and snake hunters sent by Ellison are sent
to the village to round up mutants to be fed to the new creations.
Knuckles is caught in so as Amanda, but Sonic manages to rescue her at the last second.
When the two are alone, Amanda reveals that her father worked for Ellison and now he's
missing.
Meanwhile, Ellison is combing through the raid footage and notices a human he's never
seen before.
But Dr. Hedgman recognizes that this is his son.
He orders face, remember the Hedgman face, to get him.
But knuckles volunteers an exchange for him and the village to be left alone.
Ellison gives him 24 hours and Dr. Hedgman learns that Ellison's true plan is to not create
the humans but to make half human half creature mutants.
This is such a hard left.
I'm so confused.
I know.
He would do so by poisoning the earth's water supply.
Of course he would.
Jimmy and Amanda put together a small team immune system Ellison's compound, but they fail.
Jimmy feels guilty.
But the village elder Taticus believes in him and agrees to train him to harness his skills.
Before Taticus can fully train Jimmy, Taticus is shot by Ellison's henchman face.
Knuckles sees Taticus's body and feels betrayed.
He tells the rest of the village what Ellison's plans are and Jimmy learns to control his
sonnig abilities.
They storm the compound again and this time, Sonic is captured.
Sonic is strapped to the table getting his blood drawn as Ellison studies him.
Sonic nicknames Ellison, robot nick for his cold mechanical methodology.
I don't mind this nickname, but I just don't know why you wouldn't have had Ellison be named
like Eggman.
That would have been a fine transition.
We should have got it sooner.
We should have all of this sooner.
With Sonic's DNA, Ellison is able to complete his master plan.
With the serum, he prepares a rocket to launch from the volcano where his base is located.
Oh my god, that sentence alone is nuts.
Ellison orders Sonic and Dr. Hedgman to be taken away.
His henchman throw the two into the pit with a two headed creature, while evading the
creature, the two have a heart to heart moment.
Luckily, the two get rescued by Amanda and Knuckles.
Dr. Hedgman sends out an SOS while the others fight Ellison and his henchman.
During the fight to Ellison takes the serum and transforms into a gigantic, it is mutant.
Sonic attacks Ellison, but nothing is working.
Sonic uses his energy to spin through the volcanic rock, creating a tunnel for the others
to escape.
Sure.
Sonic's actions cause the volcano to become active.
Oh my god.
The core does.
Everywhere, ruining all the DNA capsules.
They all escape in the volcano collapses with Ellison inside.
They return to the village and they all cheer.
In the distance, the rescue team is coming, Dr. Hedgman apologizes to Jimmy and he says
that he's proud of him.
Jimmy also apologizes for being a little shit and the last line of the movie is from Jimmy
where he says, "You thought it was tough raising an ordinary teenager.
You ain't seeing nothing yet."
No.
Yep.
No.
This was awful.
You know how you could have fixed this?
You know when he goes to play with squeakers or whatever his name is?
There is no sun.
Like just let Dr. Hedgman have a hedgehog as a pet in the lab and when they attack him,
like, crate gets knocked over and some sort of liquid spills.
He's a brown hedgehog and a blue liquid spills on him and then he's blue.
Or the hedgehog goes to run away real quick and runs through liquid.
And then suddenly gets speed.
We don't need a real boy.
This is not Pinocchio.
No.
There was so much unnecessary stuff.
But I can actually see hints of that movie in the James Marston Jim Carrey one because
by the end of the movie, spoiler, you had time but like, they've changed their attic to
be like his hangout.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's very much like a welcome home son moment.
Yeah.
The reporting on this response to the treatment was absent.
From what I read, I'm guessing it was not well received.
Especially because soon after Sega and trilogy entertainment hired Richard Jeffries to
write a second treatment for them.
I mean, again, not unheard of.
Again from the director of entertainment and consumer products from Sega America.
Rizly, he worked with Jeffries before and they were actually attempting to make a silver
surfer movie.
Now Jeffries would actually finally fulfill that goal when he was the one who actually
wrote the screenplay for Fantastic Four.
Hey, I'm on silver surfer, the sequel that we all know and love.
Duck Jones.
Yes.
Jeffries did something drastically different from what Denchem and Lewis did and Jeffries
actually talked to the people who made Sonic.
Did he stay a hedgehog?
Yes.
Great.
That's all I'm here for.
Specifically, he consulted with Sujinaka and the team at SDI, the people who made most
of the Sonic games.
Great.
And he said, "I want people to connect too."
Yeah.
And on May 18th, 1995, Jeffries submitted his more manageable eight page treatment.
This one titled Sonic, Wonders of the World.
No.
Wow.
I'm so upset.
There's so much backstory already that's like actually decent.
Are we?
Okay, maybe I should not judge.
Let's hear it.
Let's see what's going on.
Let's get into the treatment by Richard Jeffries.
In this plot, we open with Josh Pinsky, a 12 year old boy, Tom on.
Using a story to his class about a daring Jeff pilot attempting to break the sound barrier,
Josh sports a leather jacket with a blue hedgehog on the back.
He finishes the report and the class begins to laugh.
Hey.
The teacher is not amused.
I'm not amused.
He was supposed to give a report on the history of Sonic and he is given until tomorrow
to finish his proper report.
Oh.
Or else his parents would be called into school.
Now Josh is not happy about this, especially since his parents recently divorced.
Josh's dad, how, picks him up from school.
Hell is described as an out of work computer techie.
Too much the wild thinker to keep a steady normal job.
Hell brings Josh to his apartment where he's working on a new project known as XRI, the
extremely radical intelligence, which is an artificial intelligence computer.
Utilizing a unique system of holographic memory.
This is very much the 90s.
Yes.
That screams mid 90s.
Yeah.
It's just a advanced computer technological machine with AI that does something.
I don't know how it works, but it does.
But it's rad.
It's cool.
It's extreme.
After dinner, hell leaves Josh to find a specific part for his machine.
Without letting his dad know.
Josh uses the XRI to help him with the Sonic report.
Now, it doesn't know what Sonic is.
So Josh plugs in his Sega Saturn into the machine.
Wow.
He begins playing the game then suddenly Sonic in the game becomes self aware.
He speaks directly to Josh as he's stepping out of the screen and into the real world.
Oh, this is fun.
In this, what's this moment, Sonic, zips around the apartment, discovering this new world,
making a mess in the process.
While Josh and Sonic are distracted a bunny from the game just through the screen, that
bunny transforms into Dr. Robotnik.
What?
What a turn.
Sonic spots Robotnik and chases after him, but the mad scientist gets away after Sonic realizes
that the mechanics and the physics of the real world are not like the game.
He discovers that the longer he stays out of the game, the weaker he becomes.
Hell comes home.
He finds his apartment as a mess in the XRI machine is destroyed.
Josh lies and blames it on a burglar in the picture.
And the neighbors chime in and state that they saw a blue creature as the potential burglar.
A APB is put out for a blue hedgehog.
Hell's ex-wife Lisa arrives and scolds Hell for leaving Josh alone and takes Josh to spend
the night with her.
And Sonic finds Josh and updates him on his weakened state and that he's lost Robotnik.
Josh tries to regain Sonic's strength by feeding him cereal and peppers, but Sonic knows
that he needs Chaos Emerald's story charge and it really should have been...
Chaladol.
Sonic discovers that Chaos Emeralds actually exists in the real world and that they're hiding
inside of ordinary rocks.
Holy shit.
Look at the rocks.
How lazy.
Look at these rocks.
Josh uses the Emeralds to help him finish his report in 30 seconds and oh my gosh.
Sonic and Josh discovered cocaine.
30 seconds.
Where was Sonic all my life?
Sonic warns Josh to never use these Emeralds unless you are a master or you can get badly hurt.
Meanwhile Robotnik sets up his base camp at a abandoned ramshackle amusement park.
God this is so 90s.
He recruits some bullies and turns them into bully bots and forces them to dig under the
amusement park to help him find Chaos Emeralds.
The bully bots search beyond the park and discover Sonic and Josh.
The next day, how finds a job helping to rebuild the former ramshackle amusement park, which
will be retitled the Botnik land amusement park.
Wow.
All was specifically recruited so that Robotnik could use his XRI machine.
But that's broken.
Well, he can rebuild and he's given the funds to do so.
That's fair.
There you go.
Cut to the park filled with people and kids who are allured there with a promise of free
admission and ice cream.
I mean, done deal.
Yeah.
With the XRI machine, the children experience various virtual reality rides.
Sonic and Josh investigate and learn that Robotnik is behind the new park and that he's
even kidnapping children, turning them into batniks using the virtual rides to do so.
The machine spits out a robo clone to go home with their parents so that no one is suspicious.
What?
God, I like this plot.
Under the park are real kids mining for Chaos Emeralds.
Oh my God.
Do you want to keep that statement?
Nope.
Take it back.
That took such a turn.
Also, part of Robotnik's plan is to digitize the natural wonders of the world so that he can
digitize them so that he can charge people to experience them in virtual reality, which
is kind of what's happening today.
I was like, the plot just took a turn and then became very real.
The bully bots spot Sonic and capture him before Sonic is taken.
He gives Josh a piece of the Chaos Emerald so that he can escape.
The parents continue not to notice that their children have been turned into robot clones.
In fact, they're actually much happier that their kids are much better behaved.
Oh my God.
Josh makes a plan to return Robotnik back to the game and end his reign.
Josh tells his mom the truth about Sonic and everything and doesn't believe him at all.
And said she calls a psychiatrist.
Oh my God.
Josh convinces both of his parents that he's not lying by having them enter into the
Sonic virtual world using the XRI machine.
After returning to the real world, Josh rescues Sonic and they both battle Robotnik.
In the battle, Josh activates the XRI machine and causes Sonic, Josh Robotnik and the
Batniks to get sucked into the game, Sonic Extreme.
There, they continue to battle and the rejuvenated Sonic is able to defeat Robotnik.
Josh is able to leave the virtual world in hopes that Sonic would join him, but Sonic stays
behind to make sure Robotnik can never escape again.
Josh reunites with his parents.
Lisa states that the XRI machine is far too dangerous and Josh promises never to use it again.
Josh sits down to play Sonic Extreme and for a moment, we catch an out of character Sonic
wink at Josh.
That's cute.
It's a much better movie.
That's the end.
That's it.
The adventure continues in the video game.
There's so much still to...
I mean, it kind of implies that you can go on and make sequels with this.
You can and you can also beat Robotnik.
So you said this was 95, right?
Round, yeah, 95.
So the thing that I was thinking of the entire time you were talking about this story is
Jumanji.
What year is it?
1995, remember?
There is a mid-90s theme of jumping in and out of a game.
Yeah.
So much better.
You made Sonic his own character.
And by having him jump out of the game and into the real world, you can kind of forgive
the CGI of Sonic where you're not trying to make him a real life character.
You can kind of keep him as like a...
He's a bit.
Yeah, you can keep him as like a polygon type character because like that's the world he
comes from.
It works.
Yeah, you can almost do the like Roger Rabbit of it where it could have like in the 90s
because CGI wasn't so far.
You could have done it as like a full-blown animation.
You could?
No one would have second guessed.
No, not even a little.
Like we had the animated series out there.
So like why not use that type of style?
I also love how quick we got to Sonic.
Like him jumping out of the game.
I was like, oh great, I don't care about the name of these machines.
Like none of the names in this like other characters were distracting.
This is a much...
You know, you have to be concise because eight pages instead of 30.
Like those eight pages were used well.
Yes, they were used very well.
Now according to Richard Jeffries, the treatment was well received.
Although other reported statements would say otherwise.
Yeah.
Shinobu Toyora, the executive vice president and CEO of Sonic of America wanted to change
the villain.
He wanted a strong slash mean villain other than Robotnik since the Sonic video gamers,
Sonic and Robotnik confrontation.
That's not anything new.
Which I can kind of understand that viewpoint, but like if you're going to do your first Sonic
movie, like...
Yeah, you can't really throw Robotnik out that soon.
You got to do Robotnik right away.
You can expand after that in the sequel, but like Robotnik needs to be number one.
Right.
I'm Dr. Evil Robotnik, the greatest scientist in a genius in the world.
But those pests call me Eggman.
From Reisley expressing his concern on behalf of Sega, quote, "We were all very nervous about
it."
When we were in the midst of Roger Rabbit.
Oh, wow.
I was just an assistant to Kathleen Kennedy, but I saw what was going on and it was a very
complicated process.
And I think more than us, Japan was very nervous.
Jeffries never received any notes.
Never started working on the first draft.
The film was shelved by MGM and trilogy before they got any traction.
And according to Trilogy Entertainment founder, Penn Dasham, quote, "I pulled this out of
the project when I realized that Sega wanted to hold onto the original developer's origin
story, which I could not see working in a film structure.
And they did not want to insult the game developer to work out a more-feature friendly approach."
Trilogy would refund MGM for any pre-production development fees.
Now that MGM was out of the picture, Sega allowed Jeffries to pitch the treatment to
other production studios.
The closest he got was interest in DreamWorks, but after learning the price to license the
IP, they soon backed down.
That's fair.
I'm sure that is a very hefty price tag.
Yes.
Something that I wanted to mention is how recently all this news came to light.
Even though development for the first Sonic film was happening in the 90s, much of the
reporting wasn't publicly known until author Luke Owen published his book, Light's Camera
Game Over.
How video game movies get made in 2017?
That's nuts.
I mean, we've kind of had a resurgence of video games.
What's the one where you gripped the bricks?
It stars Spider-Man, but they were all upset that it was Spider-Man.
Uncharted.
Yes.
So like we've seen Uncharted, we have the last of us.
There's a resurgence in the last like five, six years.
Yeah.
We got Mortal Kombat.
There it is.
Thank you.
But also like, we have the technology to make it work.
Is this one that's like, how are we going to do live action, do like a Roger Rabbit type
movie and not make it feel cheap?
Yeah.
There are some movies that needed to wait to get made until the technology was there.
Yeah.
In the book, there were interviews from basically like all these people I was talking about and
like all these quotes that I just mentioned were like from the book as well.
And then for parts of Sonic Wonders of the World, that treatment, that was uploaded to Twitter
in 2022.
Oh my God.
By @SatemHistoryN.
That's nuts because that's post Sonic 1.
Yeah.
And this was Jacob Berkeley.
He didn't interview with Michaeline Reasley.
And the treatment for the first Sonic movie, which purchased by a community member at the
Twitch channel, the game show game from a former Sega employee in 2023.
Wow.
You know, it wasn't made public until February, 2024.
Good thing you didn't do this episode sooner.
I'm very happy that I didn't do it sooner.
And when they got this, the game show game, they actually did a stream where they bred the
whole treatment there.
That's dope.
This was the most known attempt to make a Sonic film, partly because it's attempt to tie it
into a game, Sonic Extreme.
I do want to mention some other attempts before moving on around the mid to late 90s.
When Hurst, one of the main writers of the Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, he gained a
significant amount of support to continue the cartoon series and would eventually lead
to a feature film.
In March of 2000, he reached out to two executives at Sega of America and the pitch was shut
down.
Another attempt was by Ken Penders.
He was one of the writers for the Archie Comics publication of Sonic the Hedgehog, so the
Sonic the Hedgehog comic book.
He was partnered with Larry Houston, a writer for X-Men, the animated series, and together
they came up with a film entitled Sonic, Armageddon.
Any progress on the film stopped when Sega of Japan wanted to focus on the Sonic X TV series
instead.
After the series ended in 2006, Penders and Houston pitched their film again and Sega was
interested.
They continued to have pre-production meetings into 2007.
After the corporate shakeup at Sega, the licensing manager Robert Leffler informed the two that
they were no longer pursuing the film.
In 2013, the film rights were purchased by Sony Pictures and was in development until
2017.
Very smart.
When Sony put the film in turn around, you know what I mean when I say turn around?
No.
Okay.
I had to look this up.
I mean we know a lot of film terms.
Yeah, that's why I'm like turn around.
Turn around.
I only know is like that's when you end shooting for the day and then you go back to shooting
the next day.
That's a turn around.
In this instance, if you have a turn around for tomorrow, yeah.
In this instance, if you have a movie that's in development, you can put into turn around
meaning that you can kind of put it back into the market to be like anyone else want to
do this.
Yeah.
That's a fascinating turn.
Right.
So Sony had put it up because they couldn't figure it out.
They put it into turn around and Paramount swooped in and continue the production which
led to the 2020 Sonic film that we have there.
So when you put it into turn around, are you like you are giving up the right to it?
Basically, yeah.
You're just like we wash our hands.
We fold.
Yeah.
Like we can't make this work.
Can anyone else do this?
So they selling it basically?
With like everything that's been developed already to be like we're not only selling the
IP.
Right.
We're also selling like everything that we've developed as well and then whatever company
can swoop in and just kind of take over from there.
That's an interesting thing to give up.
Yeah.
But go down Paramount.
Yeah.
And that's the most I'm going to really talk about with the 2020 film.
I know that there was a curse Sonic.
I know there was a whole change in that.
I'm not going to talk about that.
That might be a future episode.
It was just so much in this episode already that I just.
What do you mean?
There was just no way to justify that.
Maybe we'll do Sonic later on.
Maybe that's the movie companion thing that we watch.
That ends things there with Sonic and Hollywood, but it doesn't end things with Sonic in the
video games.
Right.
We're jumping back.
We're going back.
But before we go back, we're going to go into these advertised demands.
Welcome back.
We have talked about Sonic in Hollywood.
We're actually going back in time a little bit.
We're going back to SDI around late 1994.
Oh, yeah.
We did jump back.
Yeah.
I kind of like book into the story because I feel like from the developers, the movie, back
to the developers.
Yeah.
I mean, you either have to do all video game and then movie or the way you did it, which I'm
enjoying.
Yeah.
So in 1994, remember, Sonic was going through production meetings with that Sega assigned
SDI to make a fourth Sonic the Hedgehog game, Roger Hector, who is ahead of SDI.
At the time he figured that this game would be the last Sonic game for the Sega Genesis
since Sega was in the works of creating their new console.
He figured that this would be another 2D game just like Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic and
Knuckles, Sonic 3, and Spinball.
They got this.
No problem.
He brought in some of these Sega team to help develop the game.
Sega team is like, they're from Japan.
They're the Japanese branch.
They got to get in there.
They were there to help out on board.
He had meetings with DIC Entertainment, the studio behind the Saturday morning cartoon, and
they tied in a storyline with the show.
And they had Peter Morawick, who had worked on Sonic 3 and Spinball to lead the team.
SDI and DIC came up with a story that involved two new characters, Professor Gazebo Bubowski
and his daughter, Tiara Bubowski.
Why did we add new characters?
Because they were just sick of Robotnik.
Well, when it comes to a new Sonic game, they always add new characters to it.
So the second Sonic game introduced Tales, the third one introduced Knuckles.
They needed to introduce a new one, and they figure if they're working with the cartoon,
they introduce a bunch of new characters already.
They figured like, hey, let's do this together.
It's kind of like with the Batman animated series, if they wanted to introduce a character
into the movies, they would start working with the animated series.
Get people familiar with that character, and then when you watch the movie, you're just
like, oh, I know who.
Doctor freezes, yeah.
Yeah.
So they're working with them, creating a storyline.
So these two, Gazebo and Tiara, they are the keepers of the rings of order, who practice
the ancient art of ring smithing.
Robotnik steals the six rings of order, but immediately loses them.
Sonic is now tasked with finding those rings before Robotnik can use them.
The story went through seven rewrites.
One of the final ideas is where Robotnik creates a death egg.
This is his version of a death star, and it was so big other planets would fall into
its gravitational pull.
Eggs would have a very weird gravitational force.
Tails tries to teleport Sonic onto the death egg, but Sonic ends up on one of the planets
that fell into its orbit, and this, the Batniks, are powered by an alien species called
MIPS, M-I-P-S.
MIPS?
Well, Robotnik's evil plan was very present in the game.
The game had surprisingly little to know Robotnik actually in the game, and artwork for Dr.
Eggman could not be found in the production art.
Everything changed when the fire nation attacked.
Well, actually, everything changed around mid-1995.
It was like, wait, what?
When Sega wanted the fourth Sonic game to be on the newest console, the Sega Saturn.
Whoa.
How do you remember if Sega Saturn?
Yeah, it was kind of between that and the Dreamcast, knowing it remembers the Sega Saturn.
I have a possibly sad question, is Sega not a thing anymore?
Sega is now simply a game software company.
Oh, so they just make games that don't make consoles?
Yes.
Pretty much the whole game was scrapped, because Sega wanted the game to be a 3D polygon
game instead of a 2D platformer.
Can I say 3D polygon, do you understand?
No, no idea.
It's basically every game that we have nowadays where you have a character who is just interacting
in the real world can go anywhere that they want to with the sandbox.
Back then, because the rendering was so harsh and you didn't have much room to work with,
computing-wise, they just kind of look like polygon shapes.
With PlayStation and Nintendo 64 coming out with 3D games, Sega knew that they had to
make their own 3D games just to compete.
Have they gone through with this?
This would have been the first 3D Sonic game ever made, even though Sonic 3D blast was
a thing.
Remember, it's not a 3D game, it's a 2D game that looks like a 3D game through allusions.
Allusions.
Marwick was removed from the project and replaced with Michael Kusaka.
Although the bigger issue was that SDI was not experienced in making 3D games.
On top of that, SDI was given a deadline to have the game ready for the holiday season
in 1996.
What made the deadline even more stressful was that they also planned on making a theatrically
released Sonic the Hedgehog movie to come out around the same time.
That's so much, I'm basically one team to handle.
Another problem is that SDI didn't have the development kits for the Sega Saturn.
Whoa!
Nor did they know the specs of the machine so they couldn't even start developing until
they knew that.
When did the Saturn come out?
Well, first in Japan in 1994 and then in America in 1995.
Okay, so it had been out for a hot minute by the time this is...
But then how did they not have the specs to it?
Well, they needed the specific specs for developing the game, but they didn't have that.
It's not like reading the computer specs on it, computer development.
They needed the specs on the development kit.
After putting it in order and getting the right equipment to make the team, SDI had to
go through the process of figuring out how it works.
I actually saw the order that they put in for this machine.
It was like $30,000 for just the development computer.
And then the other components that go with it, but like just $30,000.
It's kind of nuts in my brain.
It makes sense.
So they needed to figure out how it works.
And then to help speed up the process, the team split up into two.
One team had the proper development computer to work on the boss battles.
The other team worked on the levels leading up to the boss battles using the Windows PC
development tools.
SDI had been given one Sega development computer.
And if not for that decision, both of them would have had to work on the same machine and
development would have been significantly slower.
How do you...
I'm still always surprised when we hear stories of stuff like this.
It's always the same thing.
And it just seems like they're just setting them up for failure.
And then later down the line, they would have to transfer the work from the Windows
PC to the Saturn, which was significantly less powerful.
And they ran into a lot of issues.
They actually had to get a third company called Point of View to help with that transfer.
That's a great company name.
I will discuss more about that later.
So the boss battles would take advantage of the advanced technology while the Windows PC
levels, they kind of looked like this side scrollers, except with a 3D element in which
you can go left and right, but also you can kind of go in and out of the levels as well.
All they were developing this game, Yuji Nakka, he was not involved in the game, but he did
actually come to SDI to visit to see what they're doing.
We have not heard about him in a minute.
And he looked at what they were doing and he was like, "Good luck."
Man, you're right, this guy really doesn't.
He's like, "I'm good."
He's the worst.
Tension between Sega of America and Japan started to increase and it had to do with the
lack of success of the Sega Saturn, which was being easily outsold in 1996.
By the PlayStation and the N64.
With the infighting and SDI being in a weird position between where they needed to answer
to both the Japanese and the American branches, both sides could not agree on the direction
of the game and SDI was stuck in the middle.
With all the frustrations, the team's lead, Michael Kassaka left Sega entirely.
Yeah.
Stepping in was the third team lead, which was a relatively newcomer and programmer, Chris
Seen.
SDI was in development hell.
Artists were working on concept art for levels that may or may not exist.
Designers made levels that might happen and programmers were waiting for final approval
on designs so they can move forward without wasting any time.
Something that was brought up a lot in the Sunmade Game was the perspective.
The camera follows the playable character in a third-person point of view, but the camera
lens or at least the look of it, they were trying to achieve was a fisheye lens.
It was real bad.
If you watch the test footage of it, you get a medium motion.
I was going to say that would make me nauseous.
It's very disorienting for players and the world to look like this.
It kind of looks like footage from a 360 camera.
I don't even need to look at it and I feel a little sick.
Oh yeah.
One of the concepts for the game was that they wanted four playable characters and those
four playable characters could all be played at the same time.
Whoa!
That is a tall order.
So each of those characters had different skill sets.
If you played as tales, there was one level where you could use the first person flight mode
like his POV.
Knuckles had like this top-down third-person perspective for like one of the levels.
As for the fourth character, it wasn't fully decided.
The first choice was Amy Rose, basically the girl Sonic from the animated series.
Oh okay.
Or there was Tiara Bubosky, the new character that was introducing the show.
Throw a lady in there please.
Yeah.
So the idea that they wanted to introduce surfing and bungee jumping into the game mechanics?
Oh my god.
Like how much more can you ask of this team that only really has...
I feel like they were just trying stuff and they're just like, "That's kind of cool."
Yeah, can you give us more of that?
Yeah.
And then the idea on the story mode was to use specific characters with different skill sets
so they complete different zones.
The team was very ambitious and they tried to create 15 different zones.
Jesus.
Back to 7 and they finally settled on 4.
There was Crystal Frosts, Red Sands, Jade Gully and Galaxy Fortress.
For Sonic, the main character of the game.
Now that he was in a 3D environment, this gave the team the opportunity to give him new
abilities.
There was the Spin Slash, which was much like the Spinj Dash, but he could do it in mid-air
giving them the ability to cut through an obstacle or cause more damage to an opponent.
There was the Ring Throw or Sonic Collects Rings, but also could throw them at the enemies.
Then Sonic Striek, I could not find details on that, but there was going to be that one.
I'm guessing he just like, "If he's going to Striek 4, he can move faster."
I don't know.
There were other possibilities that were posed but scrapped due to timer strings.
There was the Power Ball and Attack to Strike Down and Enemy from below.
Super Bounce, a jump with added height but less control.
Ring Shield, a shield of players could create at the cost of their own rings and Sonic
Boom, if you're surrounded by a bunch of enemies, then you could do the Sonic Boom and you
just eliminate multiples at once.
I mentioned the point of view.
That was the company that was hired to transfer the Windows PC Develop Game to the SIG Saturn.
Turns out they ran into many issues with elements.
I'm sure they did.
Yeah, not transferring over.
Then they just started programming new elements of the game without letting the team know.
You have one job.
It's not even the most creative job.
You are literally in charge of transferring.
You cannot start doing like meddling in the beginning.
You're just going to make it up.
In March 1996, representatives from the Sega of Japan branch came to visit to see the
progress on the game and they were appalled by the state of the game in the or disorganization
of the team.
They were ordered to scrap any work that they did on the Windows PC developer.
Oh my God.
They removed Chris scene as the project lead.
I don't think it's his ball.
Yep. They ordered the team to only work on the Sega Saturn developer that they gave them
for the whole game and not try to transfer other things from other developers.
No, we're in this.
Did they think, "Hey, the PC team, let's just give them a Sega Saturn."
Oh my God.
How do you not think that's going to slow down production?
The team was in Crunch Mode working about 16 to 20 hours a day to make the December deadline.
Typical?
They even report that one of the programmers canceled his lease at his apartment and moved
all of his stuff to the office just to keep working longer hours.
Been there.
He's getting it.
Sega of America executive vice president Bernie Stolar knew the team was suffering and
asked what he could do to help.
The team mentioned the development engine Yuji Nakka was using for the Sonic team in Japan
to develop their game Knights Into Dreams.
So Stolar made it happen.
He got that dev kit and they were like, "Okay, cool.
I can get that over there."
And then within two weeks of having this computer, SDI was forced to give it back.
Oh my God.
Turns out Yuji Nakka he had created the development engine and was not willing to have anyone else
work on it.
He even threatened to quit Sega if SDI continued to work on his machine.
Oh my God, that's such a...
Oh brother, this guy stinks.
In July of 2022, Nakka had denied threatening to quit and that SDI would not have been able
to use the machine because of the programming language that they uniquely developed for that
machine.
Whatever.
Things got really bad when programmer Christina Coffin developed a bad case of pneumonia and
Chris Seane was diagnosed with an unknown disease and was told he had six months to live.
That's called stress at your body.
SDI Coffin and Seane were able to fully recover.
So he's okay.
Oh my God.
It was after this that the game was delayed and it was officially canceled in early 1997.
SDI was officially shut down in 1996.
Sounds like people were getting overworked.
Yes, very much so.
For the sake of people's livelihoods and lives, none of that should have happened.
It should have.
Sega, to take advantage of the 1996 holiday season, they re-released an upscaled version
of Sonic 3D Blast for the Saturn.
Nakka and the Sonic team after finishing Sonic Knights developed a new Sonic game called Sonic
Adventure, which would help launch Sega's next console, the Dreamcast.
I don't remember any of these.
I remember the Dreamcast.
If you ever played Crazy Taxi, you played the Dreamcast.
Nope.
Oh okay, never mind.
Something that I wanted to include, but didn't actually know where to fit it in because there's
no exact timeline of when this would have happened is the various names the game went through.
Sonic Extreme is one that everyone knows it as, but there were other names that it went
under.
Now keep in mind some of these names were internal project names.
And then there were some that were official names for the game.
Some of them you can kind of tell the difference of.
So like Sonic Mars, I believe was like a proposed name for the game.
But Sonic 32X was a project.
Oh, that's a project code.
Yeah, there was Sonic Saturn, another project name, Sonic Ring Worlds.
Sonic Boom, the great name.
Sonic Extreme, Sonic Twist, Sonic PC, that was the project name, but like the PC version
was soon abandoned because they're like, we can't try to put this on the PC.
Like we're already struggling with the Saturn.
But they had the development stuff for that.
They did.
Sonic Blue St, Sonic Blast, and Super Sonic.
That's so many names.
Yeah.
The last thing that I want to mention is the legacy behind this game and the fans attempt
to try and preserve it.
There was a boss fight prototype created by Christina Coffin known as Project Condor.
And that went up for auction in 2006 on assembler games.
The hope was the prototype would be purchased and made public, but it just went to a private
collector.
Oh man.
In 2009, a package of unreleased textures and level data was leaked along with a viewer.
It allowed fans to see what the game looked like, but it was not playable.
In 2014, an assembler games member known as Jolly Roger acquired the source code from Point
of Views work on Sonic Extreme.
With a lot of trial and error to get enough of the code to work, he put together and released
on February 23rd, 2015, a single level demo for the first time ever could someone actually
play a level from Sonic Extreme.
I'll be at the level is very lackluster and incomplete, but still it happened.
Did you play it?
Did you find it?
I've seen video footage of this and in fact, that's where we get so much of the information
select the fish eye lens.
We would not have known of until we would have gotten something like this.
After that year, more of the game was discovered.
There is the level featured in the 1996 E3 trailer that people could actually play now.
Another level featured the fish eye lens perspective.
Over 150 more levels, well, incomplete levels have been discovered so far.
Whoa!
Some of which you can control Sonic and others you can only control the camera and just explore
the level.
In 2016, Jolly Roger stated he's looking through the source code in hoping to find more
to release to the public.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
From what I've noticed, like Sonic fans, they are dedicated, very extreme.
If they want to try and uncover something, they will.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like at 150 levels.
But yeah, that's the story of Sonic.
His first attempt to be in a movie and Sonic Extreme, the game that tried to tie in with
the movie, and did not happen for pneumonia reasons.
For near death experiences.
It's wild to me after we did scoop and then this, to see how much work can go into both
the film and gaming industry, and then it just, like, it's gone.
In this case, they were cutting their losses, realizing that they were pushing the team too
far.
Just a little bit.
And they were just like, this game is not worth killing someone.
Later, really.
The third one comes out on the 20th of December.
Yeah, that is Sonic.
At least what I deemed important.
This is a mountain of information.
And I had started this a year ago.
I just could not figure out what the story was.
And once I learned of the rise and fall of STI, that's where it really is.
Is like Sega trying to shoehorn the movie within that, but it was really just like their
struggle on just being a development branch of Sega.
And now they're just gone.
I mean, those people are still hopefully alive and living a good life.
Something that I left out was a lot of the programmers, developers that were part of the
team, like they went on.
They made other games as well.
I'm sure they did.
And hopefully in a less stressful environment.
Yeah.
And I didn't think it was necessary to end it with like the freeze frame on their faces
to be like, so and so.
Oh, are we not putting that in?
I don't think it was necessary.
Like many of them did go on fixed it in post and they continue to create more and more video
games.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I like the history.
I learned a lot.
Yeah.
It actually makes me want to watch Sonic 2 and 3.
Mainly I want to see when chili dogs are used.
I think chili dogs are used like immediately in the first scene of Sonic 2.
I think you're right.
Because I got to knuckles, but I also might have been in the kitchen grabbing my own snack
of chili dogs.
So we're going to enjoy some chili dogs.
Honestly, I'm starving.
Let's go get chili dogs.
That sounds great.
Anything else we want to do before we wrap up this episode?
This is our last episode of the year.
Hey, congratulations.
We're not done yet.
There's so much post work.
Yeah.
There's a lot we have to do.
Yeah.
We will see you next year.
Yeah.
With more on made movies, on made films.
We will see you all in the Patreon, Neons, Patreon, in the comments and all that stuff.
The emails, are we doing movie wrecks?
Yeah.
Because actually I thought of one last night that I did see.
Okay.
What is a movie wreck for you?
I think the substance is gold.
I keep seeing so many good things from the substance.
I've not seen that yet from what I've seen.
It seems incredible.
So everything that you think it is, throw it out.
Okay.
When Laura was in town visiting, she was like, let's watch the substance.
I've seen it.
I don't know a lot of people that have.
And she's like, I really just want to watch it to see her reactions.
And all she kept saying is it gets worse.
Up until end credits.
Every time she would be like, don't worry, it gets worse.
I was like, we've hit the ceiling.
We hit the ceiling 12.
It gets worse as a go.
And I think Demi Moore is incredible in it and Margaret Qualie-Qailey, whatever.
I'm so sorry.
Also great in it.
I think it has a really good message.
And then it is also, if you don't like Gore, you're not going to like it at all.
But there's the warning.
It is very gory.
It is a good time.
I think about it daily.
All right.
What's your wreck?
So this isn't for the movie theater experience, but I did watch this movie lately and because
it's a holiday season.
I watched the Lacey Shabair vehicle known as Hot Frosty.
Oh, that's not where I thought you were going.
I thought it was going to be a hallmark movie.
I have not seen Hot Frosty yet, but I think it's going to be a time.
It's a Netflix movie.
It's one of the Netflix Christmas movies.
It is fantastic.
Lacey Shabair falls in love.
Fogging in the air.
Fogging in love with a snowman.
Is it true that she puts her scarf around him?
And he comes to life?
Yes.
Frosty, the snowman.
It is amazing.
Someone took that song real literal.
The thing is that this movie understands the assignment.
Great.
I'm here for it.
And the magic is ridiculous.
Two of the cast members, which I'll bring up Craig Robinson.
Oh my god.
And Joe Lutruglio.
You might know him best from Brooklyn, I know.
Great.
Yeah, both of them are in it.
They're both cops who are--
Abbott and Castello.
They're investigating what happened because in the beginning when Hot Frosty turns into
a human, he accidentally breaks the window of a shop and they have to investigate it.
And they're just like, who is this good-looking man who is walking around naked?
Only wearing a scarf.
It says some mannequin vibes to it.
It's a holiday movie that understood the assignment.
They know why they cast Lacey Shabair because of her recent hallmarking.
Hallmark explosion.
It is over the top.
They know what's going on.
There is a Mean Girls reference in the movie.
That has been ruined for me.
Oh.
When I saw it, I was like, that's really clever, the way that they did it.
Yeah.
It's very clever.
It was great.
So if you are not in the mood for a holiday movie, watch the substance.
If you are in the mood for a holiday movie, Hot Frosty.
But yeah, that's it.
Anything you want to plug before we do our usual.
Now we're going to see you next year.
Excellent.
We'll see you all next year.
If you want to see the full recording of us do this episode that is going to be on our
Patreon, there you can also get ad free episodes of our episodes.
And you'll be able to vote on what our season finale episode is going to be.
If you can't support us on Patreon, that's completely understandable.
There are other ways that you can support us as well.
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That is at How Did The Snack It Bade on both TikTok and Instagram.
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that we are having here.
And until next year, stay frosty.
Happy holidays.
Merry Chrysler.
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