"It's fun to see the fan debates online about who's coming up next" - Sonic 3 director hints at even more characters being teased in the threequel, and I'm placing all my bets on Big the Cat

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 certainly won't be the end of the series' live-action adaptations, as its director hints at more character teases to come.

Earlier this year, the producer of the Sonic movies Toby Ascher said he wants the Sonic movies to be "Avengers-level events", and it sounds like there's still plans to put that into practice. Director Jeff Fowler recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the upcoming threequel, and like the two previous films before it, he said that we can expect the end of the film to tease another character from the games for future projects. While Fowler didn't say who that would be, to no one's surprise, he did say that it's "fun to see the fan debates online about who's coming up next, who's going to be teased at the end of the film.

"We have a lot of the same conversations. We've all got our favorites on the filmmaking side, and we're all making great cases for 'it should be this one or that one.' It is fun to keep that anticipation. This movie is no different in terms of teasing new characters." Personally, you can find me at the betting station putting all my money on Big the Cat, because there's just no way we can have another film without him, right? Okay, the more likely scenario is either someone like Metal Sonic or Silver the Hedgehog and Blaze the Cat, but I can dream, right?

Interestingly, Fowler also spoke about developing Shadow's storyline for the third film, with the original material obviously being a bit heavier than you might think (Maria, a young girl and Shadow's closest friend, literally gets shot and dies in the games, and she's set to appear in the film). "That's the challenge of these films," Fowler says. "It's always to take what has come before in terms of the video games and the comics and all that. How do we take the essence of what the fans love and merge it with this movie treatment that we created?

"We certainly are very respectful about what fans expect to see and what they love about the character. We're also very aware of the times and the right way to handle that kind of imagery in a family film. I think we really ended in a great place. I think fans will watch this film and really appreciate Shadow and Maria. A lot of care and a lot of love has gone into telling Shadow's story and giving fans the best movie version of the character imaginable."

With the film not due out until December 20, there's certainly lots of questions about what's going to happen to Maria, but for now we'll all just have to find out in the cinema.