Today is the day: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is officially in theaters! To celebrate, I had the chance to interview director/executive producer Jeff Fowler along with cast members Ben Schwartz, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, and Krysten Ritter.

Sonic the Hedgehog returns to the big screen this holiday season in his most thrilling adventure yet. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched in every way, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance in hopes of stopping Shadow and protecting the planet.

“I have found that it has brought a lot of gratitude, and I’m incredibly grateful because we’re an industry, which can be very difficult and very tough, and I believe myself, and from what I know from Keanu, we love to collaborate, we love to create art, and we love to try to inspire and stuff like that, and fact that I get to be in a franchise that comes out in movie screens, that survived through a pandemic, that survived through that first trailer, that listened to the fans, and to actually feel the love from everybody and to give something, I’m incredibly grateful,” Schwartz shared. “Even sending these voice notes to kids makes me so happy to see that I can change their day by talking to them as Sonic. So, I have found that I’m grateful, and something that I’ve tried to do is when I’m in moments like this or the premiere yesterday, to take a moment and appreciate where I am as opposed to worrying what my next job is, and this movie has helped me do that as well.”

“I think when I was looking at it, it was that in his circumstances, I don’t think he’s had a lot of interaction socially with people. So I felt like he was still kind of unformed. He had these primal connections and desires, but he had never interacted,” Reeves explained about his approach for bringing Shadow to life. “He’d been in his own isolation in a way. So that was something unique to the character for me, just how does that person talk about those things or feel?”

“Well, I think it’s very easy to make a movie like this where you have a character that’s basically a superhero and have it just be about that. Jeff Fowler, our director, it was always very important to him that the heart was there, that the bonds of family were there, and that the stakes were there. So I think that that was one of the main things that was important to me, for sure, that Sonic had his place, he had his home, he feels like he belongs with these people, and that allows him to have the strength and the confidence to go out and save the world,” Marsden concluded.

“I think there’s a lot of empathy. I think sometimes it gives me more empathy for my own child in letting her go off, do her thing, and be her own independent self, and seeing Sonic just kind of make mistakes and then, always come back home,” Sumpter commented. “I think that is something that I’m like, yeah, no matter how many mistakes you make, which you’re supposed to, you’re supposed to pour into them, let them go into the world and be who they are, but always have an open, safe haven for them to come back and say, ‘Hey, I might need a little help with this.’ I think it just reinstated how much that means to keep a safe space for my daughter to always come home and be able to tell me anything.”

“It lives in this very strange space between a superhero movie and a family film that everybody can enjoy. I get excited about that, I get excited also about kind of playing on that line where I’m winking at the adults, and I’m still being edgy, but I have a smile in my heart for the kids, so they know I’m kidding,” Carrey told me. “It’s a tricky little line to balance on.”

Fowler expressed, “The reason I think Sonic became such a cultural phenomenon and made such a mark on the video game industry was because there wasn’t a character like him at that time. I mean, he just was this cool, sort of spiky-haired, little kind of teenager that had some attitude and if you didn’t touch the controls, he would just break the fourth wall, tap his little toe, look at you and be like, ‘Come on, what are we doing?’ It was such a great little personality. It was just so simple but suddenly, you’re literally breaking the fourth wall, connecting with the character in such a fun way and I think that made such an impression on me and I think on kids all around the world, and it’s no surprise that he’s still here going strong, better than ever 30 years later.”

“I think a movie like this specifically, it’s really fun when you can thread that needle and have a movie that’s gonna connect with the kid and also the parents or the whole family when you can watch something together,” Ritter said. “It’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, this is a kid’s movie. The kid will watch this while I’m doing something else.’ It’s so much better if you can make the screen time or watching something an event that you do together, and connect over it. The fact that this movie has the heart, has the action, has the fun for the kids and it also is so funny, is really special and I think that is why it’s such a successful franchise.”

O’Shaughnessey added, “They have beautiful messages too. It is about family and it’s about working together, teamwork, and that whole good versus evil but then, ‘Oh, now we have to all work together to save the day,’ it’s a great family [film]. There’s just so much heart and there’s laughing. And at the holidays, what a better way to spend the holidays.”

We discussed why stories in the family genre resonate with audiences, how these movies have changed them personally, character choices, and much more.

Watch my interviews below: