The Sonic the Hedgehog movie has officially been pushed to 2020, as confirmed by director Jeff Fowler. This comes not long after it was revealed that the creative team was heading back to the drawing board with the movie's titular hero, following fan outcry over the iconic video game character's design. Since it's going to take a lot of work to redesign the movie's main character, the studio has wisely decided to push the release date back by three months.

Originally, Sonic the Hedgehog was scheduled to release on November 8 of this year. But that only gave the visual effects team a handful of months to completely rework the movie, since Sonic is presumably going to be in a great deal of it. Taking to Twitter, Jeff Fowler revealed a new release date, via a graphic, which features Sonic holding up the new release date of February 14, 2020. Yes, indeed, this is now going to be the Valentine's Day event of the year in 2020. Fowler had this to say in his caption.

"Taking a little more time to make Sonic just right. #novfxartistswereharmedinthemakingofthismovie."

That extra-long hashtag is in reference to the visual effects artists who are going to have to spend many, many days completely redesigning Sonic via CGI. There was a great deal of concern on social media from those with knowledge of the industry. VFX artists tend to work long hours as is. Concerns were expressed that Paramount Pictures would try and rush to make the November release date, meaning those working on the movie would be working even longer and crazier hours to make that happen. The extra few months should help ease those concerns at least a bit.

Beyond that, this opens up an interesting conversation. On the one hand, the vast majority of people who saw the trailer agree that Sonic's design was unfortunate. It could very much benefit the movie if people like how the main character looks, as simple as that may be to say. On the other hand, this sets a potentially alarming precedent. A major studio has now completely readjusted the creative vision of a movie due to fan outcry. Remember when people hated those first images of Pennywise from IT and then people absolutely loved the movie and praised Pennywise specifically? What if Warner Bros. had got cold feet and similarly decided to reshoot the movie with a different looking Pennywise?

Either way, this is happening, possibly for the better of one movie. Though, it may come at a greater cost, ultimately. That aside, the movie stars Jim Carrey as the evil Dr. Robotnik, with Ben Schwartz voicing Sonic. James Marsden is on board as the human lead. Deadpool director Tim Miller is also on board as a key producer. We'll be sure to keep you posted as further details on the project are made available. Be sure to check out the original post from Jeff Fowler's Twitter account below.