Sonic actor wants to build a Smash Bros. movie universe to catch up with the MCU?

In a recent interview with Variety magazine, Ben Schwartz, the voice actor of Sonic in Paramount Pictures' Sonic the Hedgehog game adaptation, revealed his ambition to create a Smash Bros. movie universe that would link iconic game characters such as Sonic and Mario. However, he also confirmed that this was just a thought and not a reality.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has been released in overseas theaters and is currently the top-grossing movie in North America, with a box office of over $60 million last week. Nintendo's previous Super Mario animated film, starring Chris Pratt, the actor who plays Star-Lord, was also very successful.

In the interview, Schwartz said that in addition to being a fan of the game, he really wanted to work with Chris Pratt: "I love Chris Pratt. I think he's great, and he played Mario... Maybe this is a sensitive topic that can't be discussed in this interview."

Both of them have previously starred in the long-running comedy American TV series "Parks and Recreation Special" and have worked together.

Sonic has previously appeared as a guest in Smash Bros., so Schwartz also conceived the idea of ​​using this series to realize the collaboration between the two: "I really think it would be great if we could do a Smash Bros. adaptation. But we're going to need to build our own IP, which will be independent, and we can have a lot of characters in this IP." He said he's also a fan of the game, so he knows players won't reject the idea of ​​having characters from various series have a battle royale.

But he went on to say that this is very difficult, almost impossible. This is not because of the conflict between Nintendo and Sega, but between the production companies. The adaptation rights of "Mario" are currently owned by the global business, and Paramount, which owns "Sonic", will not easily cooperate - the cross-production company linkage is unprecedented, and only Marvel's new "Spider-Man" has cooperated with Sony before. Schwartz said "This requires too many different studios to have a good relationship at the same time."

"Sonic the Hedgehog 3" will be released in domestic theaters on January 10. At the same time, "Sonic the Hedgehog 4" has also been confirmed to be produced.