Sega’s popular character Sonic the Hedgehog will return to TV in 2014, via a new CG-animated series to be co-produced by Sega and Genao Productions. The new series, which is tentatively titled Sonic Boom, will premiere on Cartoon Network in the U.S. and Canal J and Gulli in France.
Created by Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima, Sonic was first introduced in a Sega video game in 1991. The new action comedy, which targets kids 6 to 11, will be overseen by game designer and producer Takashi Iizuka, who leads the Sonic team.
This is the fourth time Sonic has been in a TV series. The character has also been featured in more than 70 video games and according to Sega with over 140 million videogames sold or downloaded worldwide across consoles, PCs, mobile phones and tablets.
The series was packaged by industry vets Evan Baily, Donna Friedman Meir, and Jane McGregor, who will be executive producers for SEGA. Sandrine Nguyen and Boris Hertzog are executive producers for Genao.
Baily, Meir and Nguyen developed the series, and Hertzog and McGregor structured the financing and negotiated the deals. Baily (Casper’s Scare School, George of the Jungle) and co-executive producer Bill Freiberger (The Simpsons, Drawn Together) are series showrunners.
Lagardere Active TV Licensing & New Business will handle licensing and consumer products.
So this is going to be another Lagardère Group produced show based on a licensed property?
Okay.
One wonders what would have happened if Société Dargaud (or Les Éditions Dargaud, if you prefer) were to have produced the show instead.
Would it have made a difference?
The only reason I’m saying this is that I would think that their hands would have been full already with them also producing the new Alvin and the Chipmunks based show on top of this one.
Well, I’m going to see how this show pans out and then see where it may go from here.
I don’t know why they putting an age restriction on this thing, as far as the rest of the animation world is concerned, an adult demographic for the show will probably rise up. I mean CN is a haven for that sort of thing. No doubt Nintendo will follow on with a Mario cartoon in the same format. Also what’s with decision to give Knuckles the physic of a DC superhero?
Still if at least breaks free from it’s target, I might give it a go.