Sonic the Hedgehog movie franchise crosses $1 billion mark at box office

Posted on January 7, 2025

Following the release of the recent Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie, the blue blur’s live action film franchise has officially made $1 billion USD at the box office. While this is still behind Sonic’s rival Mario (whose 2023 animated movie made $1.36 billion on its own and remains the highest grossing video game movie adaptation ever) it is still a very impressive milestone considering the state of Sonic the Hedgehog’s original live action reveal back in 2019.

The notable revenue milestone was announced by the official Sonic the Hedgehog social media account. While this includes the revenue from all three live action movies from 2020, 2022 and 2024 collectively, it’s still a pretty impressive feat considering the franchise’s infamously upsetting reveal trailer.

The first movie in the series initially attempted to…modernise Sonic’s design, for want of a better word, and give the cartoony anthropomorphic hedgehog more human proportions, along with the strange usage of Coolio’s Gangster’s Paradise. The end result turned off Sonic fans and general audiences alike and resulted in a delay to address concerns regarding Sonic’s appearance. Fortunately, the adorable and more game-accurate redesign captured the hearts of fans, and the film’s success spurred Paramount to produce two sequels which have continued to be critical and commercial successes.

Unsurprisingly, Paramount is eager to continue the franchise. As reported by Variety, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 already has a tentative 2027 release date (a year after the planned release window of The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2). For those who saw Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and stuck around for the post-credits scenes, it is clear that Paramount has some big plans for the future of the series.