Jim Carrey Addresses 'Sonic The Hedgehog' Movie Delay [TCA 2019]

Jim Carrey was on a Television Critics Association panel for the second season of his Showtime dramedy Kidding. He was supposed to have Paramount's Sonic the Hedgehog movie premiering this fall, but the film has been delayed until next year as the filmmakers redesign the CGI Sonic character./Film asked Carrey how he feels about the delay and if he's concerned about the fans having the power to impact and delay his work (even if the complaints were not about his performance specifically). Find out Carrey's detailed, in-depth thoughts about the Sonic situation below.

We probably won't know until Sonic the Hedgehog hits theaters whether redesigning Sonic was a good idea. And we may never know. If it's a huge hit, would it have still been a hit with the original character design? If it fails, was redesigning Sonic a lost cause anyway?"I don't know quite how I feel about the audience being in on the creation of it while it's happening," Carrey said. "I'll have to see what that entails, because sometimes you find the collective consciousness decides it wants something and then when it gets it, it goes, 'Okay, I just wanted it. I didn't care about it.'"Carrey makes a valid point. Remember how excited everyone seemed to be for Snakes on a Plane, until that movie actually opened and it only made $34 million domestically?

Carrey signed on to do a Jeff Fowler movie. Fowler wrote and directed Sonic the Hedgehog, but decided to listen to fans criticizing the character design. That's not Carrey's style."I believe in auteurism," Carrey said. "I believe in creatives. As far as something like a Sonic character, that's something people have a sense of ownership from their childhood."As a performer who's created indelible characters like Ace Ventura, Carey recognizes the industry ceding power over to the fans. "I think basically ownership of anything is going out the window for all of us," Carrey said. "Basically – I'm writing about this right now – there's going to be a mix and match quality that's going to actually happen where you go and do things and all the stuff like that. They'll start combining us, traits of different actors and stuff like that. I've already been Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Just like everything else in our world, we're feeling out of control in the process. We do what we can do and then it will take off. It's going to have its way, people's opinions are going to have their way. Who knows what that's going to turn into?"Sonic the Hedgehog seems to be setting a powerful precedent: however it turns out will be used as a pro or con argument for listening to fan feedback in the future.

In light of his thoughts about the interaction between creator and audience, Carrey still just does his job and hopes it works out. "I don't know what's going to happen," Carrey said. "I don't really concern myself with things because I'm just doing things. It's either going to be a good thing or a bad thing."There's probably no amount of CGI that will draw attention away from Jim Carrey's performance. He plays Sonic's nemesis, Dr. Robotnik, in live-action. 

Finally, just for clarification, /Film asked if Carrey had to do reshoots to accommodate the new animation. He laughed off the suggestion."Me? No," Carey said. "Of course not. Silly question."The filmmakers may not have even completed most of the Sonic shots except for what appeared in the trailer. But the character's redesign is already complete, and the VFX team will just need to plop the new Sonic into the footage Carrey already shot. Kidding returns to Showtime on November 3, 2019, and Sonic the Hedgehog is now due in theaters on February 14, 2020.