Chris Evans of Captain America fights with Sonic the Hedgehog in concept art for the film. Paramount’s marketing for the video game adaptation went off to a disastrous start when the first trailer dropped last year, featuring a disturbingly realistic version of the beloved blue elephant. In response, the studio extended the film by a three-month delay to allow director Jeff Founder and his team of VFX artists to redesign CGI Sonic. Luckily for Paramount, the redesign only cost a reported $ 5,000,000 since that point did not eliminate the majority of the film’s effects.
In the end, the move paid off, with Sonic the Hedgehog mostly positive reviews and setting a new opening weekend record for video game movies this past weekend. After the success of the film, people have begun to take a closer look at how the project evolved throughout its development, going back to before Sonic’s infamous design. As it turns out, she is the only character in the film who did not get a significant change from her initial conception.
Twitter user Marks Pan has posted the concept art for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie to his account since 2014, in which it is one of several pieces published online by one of the film’s actors. As you can see below, the art depicts a scene where Sonic and his human pal, Tom Wachowski, once meet in a fight. Here, however, is portrayed by Tom Evans and not by James Marsden (who plays the character in the film).
The final film follows Tom, a sheriff from the small town of Green Hills, Montana, as he helps Sonic retrieve his magic rings from San Francisco so he can escape into another world. It was reported that Paul Rudd was being considered to play Tom in May 2014, just before Paramount officially cast Marsden in the role. Later that year, in December, someone leaked an alleged internal casting shortlist for Tom and Sonic that was drawn before Marsden and Ben Schwartz were cast as related characters. Among the actors on this list were Evans and Rudd, in addition to their fellow MCU actors Chris Pratt and Michael B. Jordan (among other big names). The leak also included Pratt’s poster art with Sonic as Tom, then Evans as the only one who did not get concept art for the film.
Evans would have been busy working on the Avengers: Endgame around the time he was supposed to play Tom in the Sonic the Hedgehog and a month later began film production and started shooting knives. For this reason, it is difficult to say how seriously he was considered for the role, compared to other actors on the leaked shortlist. Either way, it seems that things worked out for the best. Marsden’s awkward interactions with Sonic have been singled out as one of the film’s highlights in most of his reviews, and Evans (and his sweaters) instead went on to steal scenes in Ryan Johnson’s mega-successful whodunnit.
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