With the Sonic games not doing terribly well in the recent past, Sega Sammy Group has announced its plans to bring Sonic to the movie theaters. In an interview with The World Folio, company president and CEO, Hajime Satomi, talked about the company’s decision to expand their business into other entertainment areas beyond what they are currently involved, and one of the ways that will happen is with a Sony Pictures “live-action and animation hybrid" Sonic the Hedgehog movie scheduled for release in 2018. Satomi didn’t offer any further details on the upcoming movie, and I have a hunch that this could go either relatively okay or really, really badly. Sonic has appeared on TV in the past with, well, mixed results. Who knows, maybe they’ll make something decent?

I’m not surprised to see Sonic come to the big screen because it’s not like Sega has too many options. I grew up a Nintendo fan through and through, so I never cared too much about Sonic despite finding his games entertaining (well, at least some of them). 25 years later, Sonic hasn’t overtaken Mario in popularity as Sega had hoped, but it’s still an incredibly popular video-game character and also responsible for this truly amazing treasure of a Twitter account, which I hope somehow makes it into the movie. Here’s hoping.