Paramount wants to make the Sonic movies "Avengers-level events," but can the blue hog keep up with the MCU?

Paramount's ambitions are high when it comes to Sonic, as the franchise's lead producer wants them to be "Avengers-level events."

It can't be denied that the Sonic movies are popular. Both of them sit within the top 10 highest-grossing video game film adaptations, and they've definitely relit a spark in the Sonic fandom, even if the movies haven't translated into overwhelmingly strong video game sales. Even still, franchise and series executive producer Toby Ascher has some bold plans for the live-action Sonic universe. Speaking to Paste about the Knuckles series, Ascher said, "We got really excited about the idea of expanding our characters in our world into television, specifically, because it gives us a platform to really do character studies.

"We knew that, with Shadow coming into Sonic 3 and some of the bigger things that we want to do, the Sonic franchise on the movie side is going to be these Avengers-level events. They're going to be these big, exciting stories that have a lot of different characters. And so what television did for us is it gave us time to go into some of the more supporting characters in depth and really build them out in cool ways."

Now, I don't know about you, but as much as I love that blue hog and his furry friends, I think he's probably not got what it takes to achieve "Avengers-level events." Yeah, sure, there's plenty of characters they could throw into the films to make the hardcore Sonic films point at the screen and cry tears of joy, but that isn't the same as building up an audience over the course of almost two decades like the MCU has.

Ascher went on to talk about how the team behind the Sonic movies loved the fish out of water comedy that came with Knuckles right at the end of Sonic 2, saying the series follows a similar vibe. "We thought we could translate that into a full series. I think it's by far the funniest version we’ve had in any of the Sonic movies so far. It leans into weird comedy partially because of Adam Pally and because of wha Idris [Elba] brings in a really great way."

We still haven't seen a full trailer for Sonic 3 yet, but a teaser was released in February that featured the series' best song. It's currently set to release December 20, so it's only a matter of time until a proper trailer is released, though.