I don’t know if this Sonic the Hedgehog story contradicts yesterday’s rumor about Paul Rudd leading the film or not, but Variety is now reporting Westworld‘s James Marsden is set to star. They don’t mention Rudd in the piece at all. Paramount picked up the rights to SEGA’s iconic video game character last year and set Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jeff Fowler to direct. Deadpool‘s Tim Miller will exec-produce.
Unclear in the story is exactly what Marsden will be doing. Will he be voicing Sonic in the CGI/live-action movie? Or will he be taking one of the main human roles? Rudd was said to be playing a cop who helps Sonic defeat the evil Dr. Robotnik. The only additional details are that Robotnik is imprisoning animals in robots and stolen chaos emeralds, which is basically the plot of the first Sonic video game from 1991.
While this will be Sonic’s first big screen movie to himself, he could be seen briefly in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and also appeared in Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph. Paramount has set Sonic the Hedgehog to open on November 15th 2019.