Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Speeding Toward Filming Start Date

Chili dogs at the ready: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has a filming start date. In August, Paramount Pictures announced the blue hedgehog would be racing back into theaters on December 20th, 2024, a release date recently vacated by another franchise threequel about blue aliens: James Cameron's Avatar 3. According to a listing on Production List, Sonic 3 is slated to begin production on August 31st in London. (Whether the Blue Blur makes his production date depends on the potential SAG-AFTRA strike that could commence on July 1st, which would shut down all film and TV production as 160,000 actors, voiceover artists, stunt performers, and other media professionals take to the picket lines.)

Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who wrote 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog and co-wrote 2022's Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with John Whittington, also scripted Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Plot details remain under wraps, but Casey and Miller hinted the threequel would pull from 2001's Sonic Adventure 2 and 2005's Shadow the Hedgehog video games after Sonic 2's post-credits scene teased the anti-hero hedgehog. 

"The fact that Shadow is clearly going to be in the franchise moving forward, I don't think it's revealing anything to say we'd love to incorporate elements from Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog, his solo spinoff game," Miller said during a recent Q&A.

Project Shadow is the creation of Professor Gerald Robotnik, the grandfather of "Eggman" Robotnik, played by Jim Carrey in Sonic and Sonic 2. (Carrey announced his retirement from acting in 2022.) 

"I don't know anything about [Sonic 3]," Ben Schwartz, who voices the speedy blue hedgehog, previously told ComicBook. "I know Jim Carrey said that he might retire. I hope that we all get to come back and do another one because I would love it."

Schwartz continued: "That's one of my favorite characters, so my hope of all hopes is that all of us come back and we get to make another one, and then we get to add a Shadow. I hope that it keeps going. I hope that I keep doing it because I love that. I love that franchise so much."

Also in development is a live-action Knuckles spin-off series at Paramount+. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 speeds into theaters December 20th, 2024.