‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Rings Up Record Domestic Videogame Pic Debut Of $57M & 4-Day $68M; Global Launch At $100M
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: While a feature version of Sonic had been brewing as far back as the 1990s at MGM (and then Dreamworks for a bit), this iteration with Original Film producer Moritz has been simmering since 2013 at Sony. By 2016, Oscar-nominated animated short director Jeff Fowler (Gopher Broke) boarded with EP Tim Miller, the project repping Fowler’s feature directorial debut. The following year, Original Film landed a first look at Paramount, with Sony putting Sonic in turnaround, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Heading into the weekend, social media monitor RelishMix spotted an excitement among Sonic fans about seeing him on the big screen for the first time, “with some interesting carryover to more casual family/animated ticket purchasers as well.”
“The overall sentiment from fans is one of ‘thanks’ to Paramount for adjusting the first look of Sonic to match a more beloved one based on the Sega video games. The fans’ discussion suggests they feel as if they’ve been heard while most of the time, they are not (even if they do end up buying tickets to cinemas or seeing the re-make/re-imagining later).”
Sonic touted a social media universe heading into opening weekend of 577.5M, close to 3-fold higher than the average video game movie, comprised of 18.2M Facebook Fans, 11M Facebook video views, 32.9M Twitter Followers, an enormous 508.9M YouTube views and 6.5M Instagram followers.
Social media activity was also excellent for Sonic with a viral re-post rate for video materials of 30:1, far outweighing the usual 13:1 for the videogame pic genre. The average daily YouTube views for top clips were around 116K, far ahead of the standard 16K for the genre, but also these clips were spread across a variety of themes and not simply skewed by boosted support on the studio platform.
“Overall, Sonic is the video game based hit that others strive to be – and its social reach and activity actually benefited from the film’s false start last May (referring to its initial trailer – see our Notables for more),” says RelishMix in their latest report.
While RelixhMix says that the social media campaign for Sonic “had plenty of fine efforts…from the soundtrack to Jim Carrey’s presence (18.1M followers),” the best publicity was actually director Fowler’s response to fans that he was taking the hedgehog into dental surgery after their gripes piped online over the blue guy’s teeth. In the wake of this, RelishMix noticed that fans continued to seek out the old trailer that was pulled (now on a foreign site), which fueled another 25M views toward the pic’s overall social reach. Then “when the new, revised Sonic debuted in trailers last November, fans were delighted. They were just as ready to discuss and debate as they were in May of 2019, but now, the discussion veered toward a frenzy as the fans touted their influence on a big screen production of one of their favorite heroes. Credit to Fowler and Paramount for pivoting based on social media discussion and reading the reach/activity from last May correctly – that unchanged, the film would have had challenges ahead.”
FANTASY ISLAND: Some say the biggest hurdle for Fantasy Island is that it didn’t come off as scary in the trailers; that’s why we’re not at a $20M-plus opening for the pic. RelishMix says that while the new spin on the ABC series put off older viewers who were upset that Tattoo wasn’t in the movie, “most folks who see the trailer feel like they know what they’re getting into – and they are either in the mood, or they’re not. Discussion suggests that those headed to theaters to try this horror take on a beloved series are skewing younger and are definitely fans of cast members like Lucy Hale and Maggie Q. They like the idea of a Blumhouse take on a vacation gone wrong, and feel like the Valentine’s Day holiday allows them a good excuse for a popcorn flick.”
Hale, who now stars on CW’s Riverdale spinoff Katy Keene, is the biggest social media driver of the film, counting 38.4M followers which is more than a third of Fantasy Island‘s social media reach across Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram (112.5M).