‘Sonic 3’ Writers On Introducing Shadow, Implications Of That End Credits Cameo & Breaking The Video Game Movie Curse

Similar to the alchemists of yore, Hollywood has spent countless hours and money trying to figure out how to turn beloved video game properties into box office gold. Based on the runaway success of the Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise thus far, it’s probably safe to assume that Josh Miller and Patrick Casey have discovered the screenwriting equivalent of the philosopher’s stone.

“There’s no real formula to that, per se,” admits Miller as he and his creative partner sit down with me over to Zoom to discuss the third entry in Paramount’s Sega-inspired series, which is very close to passing $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide.

The overall goal, the film’s writers explain, is to balance the essence of gameplay with the narrative expectations of a feature film. If one outweighs the other, even by the slightest margin, you’re in for a proverbial game over. “These movies are colorful and kinetic, but what makes them work as movies is the character stuff,” Casey adds. “Really digging in and and finding things about each of the characters that can really make the audience care about these colorful little guys.”

This time around, the “colorful little” trio of Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Knuckles (Idris Elba), and Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) — find themselves at odds with a second anthropomorphic, sneaker-wearing hedgehog from outer space: the fan favorite Shadow (Keanu Reeves). Filled with rage and pain over the loss of his best friend half a century before, Shadow joins forces with Ivo Robotnick’s grandfather, Gerald (Jim Carrey now getting to chew up twice as much scenery in a dual role), to exact revenge on humanity.

To go any further than would be to ruin surprises along the way, but if you’ve already seen the movie, head below for my spoiler-filled chat with the movie’s writers…

***WARNING! The following contains major plot spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog 3!***

Weiss: What was the process for breaking the story of Sonic 3?

MILLER: You’re getting together with Jeff [Fowler], the director, and Toby [Ascher], our main producer. The previous movies always ended with a teaser, pointing in the direction of what we got to do [in the next one]. Shadow, as fans know, comes with a lot of story, more so than Tails and Knuckles did in their Sega Genesis game premiere. Shadow has a lot of story, some of it a little conflicting because it’s from two different games. So it’s just kind of like, “What story elements are we taking and how do we marry that with the universe we’ve established in the movies?”

CASEY: There was more research to do for this movie to fully absorb everything having to do with Shadow, Gerald, and Maria — and thinking about how we were going to tell that story. But also figuring out what’s going to be happening for Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and all our returning characters, and never losing sight of the fact that the title of this movie is still Sonic 3. It’s not “Shadow the Hedgehog, Guest Starring Sonic.” So we had to find some satisfying stuff for Sonic as well, and a lot of it then stemmed from thinking about Sonic and Shadow as mirrors of each other; thinking about how Shadow’s story related to the story of Sonic that we’ve told so far, and using Shadow to bring that into starker relief. We were thinking about what would drive Sonic over the edge in a similar fashion and find that drama.

MILLER: It is funny working on a movie like this and starting the story meetings, and having someone in the room being like, “So I was playing Sonic Adventure 2 last night, and it was making me think…” You realize that it’s our job right now to play video games.

CASEY: [Another major consideration was] “What do we do with Gerald?” Because in the game’s story, he dies a long time ago and only exists in the past. We decided we wanted to bring him into the present and once we had the idea of “Well, what if Jim plays both characters?”, that really informed the whole story and us thinking about the story through the lens of where Ivo is at. Starting with him all depressed, doing a team-up, switching sides, going through this whole emotional journey with his grandfather, and everything that that entails as well.

Weiss: I can’t think of anyone other than Keanu Reeves voicing Shadow now. Was he always at the top of your wishlist?

Miller: Yeah. I mean, the internet had been talking about him as Shadow for a while … I think everyone knew they were going to try to get Keanu. You don’t know if he’s going to say “Yes” and thankfully he did. But yeah, I just feel like that was the voice everyone involved had in their head while working on it.

Weiss: Getting back to Robotnik, how much of the character is on the page and how much does Jim bring to it on the day?

Miller The vast majority of the things coming out of his mouth came from his brain. He ad-libs a little bit on set, but it’s more like he has all these ideas and then wants them in the script, so that he can come in fully-rehearsed. He has very specific ideas for even just how he’s delivering certain lines, and then we’ll play around with it a little bit. But especially now that we’re used to the format, you just have fun and almost think of it as designing a little space for him and imagining what’s he gonna come up with when you put him in this space.

Casey: When we wrote Sonic 1, we didn’t know that Jim was going to be playing Dr Robotnik. So moving forward, it’s been a totally different experience, knowing that it’s going to be Jim and trying to come up with bits to lay the foundation for him to really express himself. In this one, we were able to give him a little more emotion to play with, which he loved and really embraced. And then he has all these crazy ideas for gags to throw on top of it, which is what you want from Jim, because he’s a comic genius. You’re like, “Yes! Give us gags!” Sometimes he proposes something so insane it can never work and then Jeff has to be like, “Uh…I don’t know about that one, Jim.” You never have to push Jim to go further. He’s always going to go further on his own. You have to to pull him back a little bit.

Miller: Yeah, he’s giving 110% every day. It’s pretty impressive to see. You think when somebody has been a star for that long, you start to imagine that they’ve become like the old Marlon Brando stories where he wouldn’t read the script and would have an earpiece, so people could just give him his lines off-camera. If anything, it feels like Jim keeps wanting to put more and more of himself in it. He clearly likes the creative challenge.

Casey: We were on set one day when Jim started doing a headstand that was completely unscripted and seemed like he was going to kill himself. And everyone had [to be like] “Jim, stop! What are you doing?!” He does what he feels, man. If he thinks it’s funny, he’ll do anything.

Weiss: How would you say the Sonic franchise has evolved from a scriptwriting perspective since the first movie?

Miller It’s interesting, because we like to think Sonic keeps evolving a little bit each time with bigger, new challenges. But this one we really saw as kind of Ivo Robotnik’s [movie]. He was transforming more in this one than Sonic does. Sonic’s still not perfect yet. Obviously he kind of dips into the dark side a little bit and has to remember to stay true to who he is.

Casey: In that first movie, we really were inventing a whole new version of Sonic that bears only a passing resemblance to the Sonic from the games, because Sonic in the games is this full-grown hero. He’s kind of laconic even, whereas [with our adaptation], it just stemmed from the challenge of getting Sonic to Earth and not wanting to make it a standard issue “Guy from another world lands on Earth and doesn’t understand it.” We came up with this [idea] where he grew up on Earth, sort of observing everything. He’s a little bit of the Little Mermaid and little bit of Superman, except for the fact that he doesn’t even have the chance to pretend to be normal. But he became this excited little kid. With each movie, he grows up a little more; he’s taking on more responsibility, he’s facing these bigger challenges. With this one, we explored darker territory than we’d gotten to previously, as Sonic really has to struggle with facing his greatest challenge, and how he’s going to react to that. He’s relied so much upon Tom [James Marsden] and Maddie [Tika Sumpter] as parental figures. He started off with nothing and now he’s gained a family. He’s gained friends and a team. But the more you have, the more you have to lose.

Weiss: I loved the third act battle between Sonic and Shadow as they go Super Saiyan with the Chaos Emeralds. How did that come about?

Miller: At some key point early on, Jeff will have ideas for an action set piece that he wants and then we all work to figure out, “Well, how, how do we get this in the movie? Can it be in the movie?”

Casey: We all brainstorm big visual things and think about what we really want to see, what Jeff really wants to direct, and then figure out how to structure it so it makes some sense [in the story]. The third act of Sonic 2 was so big with the giant Robotnik robot that we were all like, “How do we top it? How can we make this feel even bigger?” Obviously, Sonic Adventure 2 ends in space, so it just felt like that was the only place to go [along with] Super Sonic and Super Shadow. The bit of the two Robotniks looking out the window and seeing Super Sonic and Super Shadow flashing all over the Earth is so ridiculously huge and epic.

Weiss: Video game adaptations have gotten a bad rap over the years, but you guys have really cracked the code. What’s your secret?

Miller: I think step one is just, “Does it seem like a good idea to you?” We always love joking about what happened when we got the job. We told one of our friends and they were like, “Why?” And we were like, “What?! We’re writing a Sonic the Hedgehog movie because it’s f—ing cool!” But with Jeff and Toby, the common thing between all of us, is that it seemed obvious how a Sonic movie could be cool. Point being, if it feels like it’s too much of a struggle to adapt a game, then you probably shouldn’t be the one doing it. We knew we had to change a lot because the that’s just what the studio wanted. There are certain realities if you want the movie to get made, and you hope that in success, you can bring in more characters and more lore in the sequels. We just try to think of, “Well, a movie and a game are two completely different things. How do you make watching the movie give someone the same feeling that playing the game gives them?” There’s no real formula to that, per se.

CASEY: These movies are colorful and kinetic, but what makes them work as movies is the character stuff, really digging in and and finding things about each of the them that can really make the audience care about these colorful little guys. They’re such ridiculous creatures, but we do everything we can to make them feel like real people with real emotions and real pain and real back stories that people can really latch onto and care about — even in the midst of gigantic explosions and colorful action that lend context to all this video game-y stuff. [The goal is to make] it feel both like a video game and like a real movie.

Weiss: The mid-credits stinger has some great setup for the future with the introduction of Amy Rose. Where did the idea come from?

Casey: Our final draft also ended introducing Amy in a similar manner, but it was also a little different in ways we can’t discuss.

Miller: It dipped more into what a story for a fourth film might be. At some point, they wisely decided, “Let’s make it even more of a tease and less of planting a flag, story-wise.”

Casey: But we were definitely excited. We’ve wanted to bring Amy into the franchise, because we know that the little girls of the world deserve their own super-powered hedgehog. My nieces have been bugging me about it ever since they learned that Amy Rose existed. I know they were really happy to see her at the end of this one.

Weiss: Do you have someone in mind to voice the character, à la Reeves and Shadow?

Miller: No, they’d murder us for even suggesting.

Weiss: Paramount just announced a fourth movie slated for 2027. Where would you like to see Sonic’s story go from here?

Miller: He keeps getting a little older each time. We can’t really give any kind of hints, but I think it’s not really a hint to say that we like the idea of Sonic’s aging evolution continuing. We got Sonic out into space just a little bit [and] hopefully, we can keep expanding what directions the franchise can go in.

Casey: The Sonic Universe is so rich. There’s still so much more unexplored stuff. Even after completing our trilogy, there’s definitely room for more things to explore moving forward. I think Ben Schwartz said on TV last night that he wants to do 15 movies. We’ll see. I’m not guaranteeing 15 movies.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now playing in theaters everywhere!

***This interview was edited for length and clarity***