By 1993 plans to plant the seeds of a larger project than the two ABC cartoons were in play and bringing Sonic the Hedgehog to the big screen was the next goal. At the time the blue blur had serious commercial clout, and other video games movies were being made, so by August 1994 Sega had signed a deal with MGM Studios and Trilogy Entertainment.
“That was when I sat down with Edward Pressman [The Crow, Street Fighter] and a bunch of producers to find out who was the right partner for us,” says Risley. “I was basically driving the Sonic movie. I don’t know who came up with the idea – whether it was Tom or Shinobu [Toyoda, Sega executive vice-president and COO] or me, or we talked about it as a group – but having come from the movie world, I was always pushing those things. And when we got the go-ahead from Japan to push forward with the movie, it was a very small group of us working on it. I was finding partners, Shinobu was talking with Japan and Tom was making sure everything was running in order. Because, again, this wasn’t just a movie – this was something that could affect our whole brand.”
Continue for the full story......