it was still well-received and grossed $433 million worldwide.
Paramount is undoubtedly hoping Sonic can follow suit and be a success, hopefully launching a new franchise for the struggling studio (which is coming off a stretch of box office bombs including The Rhythm Section). One of the best ways to ensure a film has solid commercial prospects and stands a good chance at turning a profit is to keep costs down, and that's precisely what Paramount did in this instance. Sonic was relatively inexpensive to make.
The Sonic the Hedgehog production budget is approximately $85 million, a figure well below the aforementioned Detective Pikachu ($150 million). It's also much cheaper Paramount's recent genre fare like Gemini Man ($138 million) and Dark Fate ($185 million). The Sonic budget is this low even with the late stage character redesign, which was only $5 million or less.
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Going by the old rule of thumb, Sonic would need to gross about $170 million to break even. Seeing that it isn't facing much competition for its target demographic (a debut lower than Detective Pikachu, so it'll be interesting to see how Sonic fares at the multiplex.
The two films don't have much in common, but Sonic is in a similar boat to the lowest debut in the DCEU, but it isn't a typical box office bomb because its budget was also low. So, Sonic could struggle to meet its modest expectations and still go down as something of a hit because Paramount didn't invest too many resources in it. And if this is the latest video game flop, then hopefully the studio won't lose too much money on it.
