By Gavin Boyle
The SONIC franchise will introduce Amy Rose to its cast of characters and just revealed that Kristen Bell will serve as her voice actress.
“WE HAVE OUR AMY ROSE!!! And I could not be more excited!!! Please welcome the incredible @kristenanniebell to the @sonicmovie family!!! 💙” Sonic voice actor Ben Schwartz wrote on an Instagram post featuring a photo of him alongside Bell.
Related: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 4 in the Works
The addition of Amy Rose does not come as a surprise, given she was introduced in a post-credit scene at the end of SONIC 3. Meanwhile, her introduction follows the franchise’ schedule of expanding its universe with an additional character with each movie. Paramount announced the development of a SONIC 4 in December of 2024, just weeks after the third movie premiered in theaters.
“With 30-plus years of characters in the SONIC library, it’s always so exciting to tease new characters at the end of each film,” director Jeff Fowler said after the third movie. “Bringing new characters can really push us in new directions, and it is very exciting. But, right now, we’re just focused on the release of this third movie, and we’re hoping it will be received well. We’ll see where things go from there.”
While characters like Amy Rose are recognizable, they weren’t part of the movies from the start so that those new to the franchise would have a chance to understand who all these characters are, rather than be overwhelmed with an immediately built-out cast. At the same time, slowly introducing characters allowed those crafting the franchise to tell these characters’ stories individually before bringing them together. Knuckles, for example, received an entire series on Paramount+ before being heavily featured in SONIC 2.
“We got really excited about the idea of expanding our characters in our world into television, specifically, because it gives us a platform to really do character studies,” executive producer Toby Ascher said.
“We knew that, with Shadow coming into SONIC 3 and some of the bigger things that we want to do, the SONIC franchise on the movie side is going to be these AVENGERS-level events,” he continued. “They’re going to be these big, exciting stories that have a lot of different characters. And so what television did for us is it gave us time to go into some of the more supporting characters in depth and really build them out in cool ways.”
SONIC 4 is likely to continue to drive the franchise down a great path given that it has followed a similar multi-year gap between movies seen in the previous entries, as well as the addition of another great voice actress. SONIC 4 is expected to hit theaters sometime early next year.
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