Sonic the Hedgehog 3

One actor, two Robotniks, never on the same day

Jim Carrey said in April 2022 that he was considering retirement, and set his own price for coming back: a script written in gold ink. Director Jeff Fowler had one printed in 24-carat ink, and Carrey was confirmed in February 2024. He plays Ivo Robotnik and Ivo's grandfather Gerald.

Three hours in the makeup chair came before every Gerald scene, and the two Robotniks could not be shot on the same day, so the actor Brendan Murphy stood in for the one Carrey was not playing. The crew documented the set in notes and panorama photographs, then restored it to the same state for the second part of the scene. Six studios animated the film in parallel, with the in-house team at Paramount owning the Sonic assets and lending them out, which the producer Toby Ascher says kept costs down.

The Story

In 1974, a meteorite carrying an alien hedgehog crashes in Oklahoma, the military seizes him, and Professor Gerald Robotnik experiments on his power at a research facility. The creature, Shadow, grows close to Gerald's granddaughter Maria, who is killed in an explosion during an escape attempt. Fifty years later someone hacks the prison holding Shadow, and Sonic, Tails and Knuckles have to face him.

The film draws on two games, Sonic Adventure 2 (2001) and Shadow the Hedgehog (2005), and Fowler had animated the second himself before adapting several of its action scenes here. The theme song from Sonic Adventure 2, performed by Crush 40, comes back too: Maria plays its riff on a guitar in the opening scene, and it returns as Shadow's leitmotif.

The Ideal Audience

The rating is PG, and Common Sense Media places it at nine and up: the death of a child, a drone attack, laser fire, explosions, and a chase where a character pulls a pistol. The swearing is infrequent but runs to "badass" and "helluva", and there is no sex and no drinking. CinemaScore audiences gave it an A, and its $492 million worldwide on a $122 million budget is the highest the series has grossed.