This past February, Paramount released Sonic the Hedgehog and the movie blew up, praised by critics and becoming a smash hit at the box office. Although its run was unfortunately cut short after a month thanks to the global pandemic shutting down theaters everywhere, it ended up pulling in a solid $307 million worldwide – not too shabby on an $85 million budget. Even with an abbreviated release window, it’s done equally a well with its digital release, with Paramount reporting it sold 2 million units. It was fairly inevitable, even with things being topsy-turvy in the world right now, that it would get a sequel.

Today, THR confirmed that Paramount is making a Sonic sequel, and director Jeff Fowler will be back in the director’s seat. Likewise, Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who wrote the script for the first movie, will be penning the script for the sequel, though the joint collaboration between Paramount and Sega is still in the very early stages of development.

What’s not known is whether or not Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Jim Carrey or Tika Sumpter, the main members of the cast of the first movie, will be returning. But a betting person would say yes considering the first movie perfectly set up a sequel, with Carrey’s evil Dr. Robotnik being stranded on another world and doggedly working on a plan to get back to Earth. The post-credits scene also introduced Tails, a character from the games who is Sonic’s friend and ally. Clearly, Paramount had enough confidence in Sonic to set it up for a layup sequel and their confidence paid off.

It’s a nice success story for a movie that was originally much-maligned. When the initial design for Sonic was released on the internet, fans recoiled from the video game hedgehog’s far too human-looking eyes and ropy, muscular physique. The ensuing backlash was enough for Paramount to issue a mea culpa and invest quite a bit of money into redoing Sonic’s design. But it was worth it, with the final design being far closer to the big-eyed cartoonish version we know from the comics – and far less nightmare fuel for kids.

As it’s still in early development, we don’t know anything about the plot or details. But with the success of the first and the same team already back for the second, this project will likely move forward fairly quickly. We’ll keep you posted.