With the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 now online after having premiered at the The Game Awards last night, earlier today I was able to speak with director Jeff Fowler about making the sequel. During the interview, Fowler talked about how the sequel is much bigger in scope, bringing Knuckles and Tails into the movie, how Knuckles is like the Terminator or the Winter Soldier coming into Sonic's world, if they’re planting any Easter eggs for the fans (like other new characters), what it’s like working with Jim Carrey and the way he’s transformed himself “into the Eggman that the fans know from the games,” the design of Tails and Knuckles, and more. In addition, with the success of the first film and the fact they’re making a sequel, I asked if he’s already begun thinking about a 3rd Sonic movie. He said:

“Of course. Even if somebody didn't ask me to be thinking about ideas for future installments, it would be impossible not to. Even as we're working through the visual effects and animation on this film, it's impossible not to already get excited and to be starting to scheme about all the directions that the story could go, what new characters coming in, the impact that they could have. It's the best part of the creative process when it's just kind of a blank canvas and you can really just start to have blue sky ideas, even if, again, it' not in an official capacity. If the request comes through to start laying the blueprints for another Sonic film, I will be armed and ready with all kinds of ideas. I would just love to get that opportunity.”

In the sequel, Sonic is eager to prove he has what it takes to be a true hero and gets his wish when Dr. Robotnik (Carrey) returns with a new partner, Knuckles, in search for an emerald that has the power to destroy civilizations. To help save the world, Sonic teams up with Tails, and together they embark on a globe-trotting journey to find the emerald before it falls into the wrong hands. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 stars James Marsden, Ben Schwartz as the voice of Sonic, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Adam Pally, Shemar Moore, Idris Elba as the voice of Knuckles, and Colleen O'Shaughnessey as the voice of Tails.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 arrives in theaters April 8, 2022. Check out what Jeff Fowler had to say below.

COLLIDER: You know I'm friendly with Tim Miller, and he told me that he likes the sequel, and he doesn't like anything, so what does that mean?

JEFF FOWLER: I can attest to this for having sat next to him for the 15 years I worked for his company. He can be very withholding with his praise, so to have screened the movie for him and for him to have offered his support and praise really is wonderful. It means a lot.

Was it a $5 bill or a $10 bill you slipped him?

FOWLER: I I'll never tell, Steve. I'll never tell. My wife finds out, I'm in real trouble. If she finds out that the money's missing from the bank account.

He told me that the film is much bigger in scope than the first film. So is that true?

FOWLER: I Oh yeah. I think you probably get a sense of that from the trailer. Obviously bringing in Tails, bringing in Knuckles, sending them all on this great big action adventure. It is much bigger in scope, but also in humor, and of course, what good is any of that if there's no heart or emotion? I think that was such an important part of the first film. I think it really helped audiences connect with Sonic as a character, and so we've just worked really hard not to get too carried away with set pieces and action and adventure, although it is absolutely bonkers how much great stuff there is, but also continue to tell Sonic's story, develop him as a character and give all the characters, all the new characters, their own arcs in order for everyone to feel like fully realized, fully dimensional characters.

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Image via Paramount

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After the success of the first film, did you feel like you had more freedom in terms of the ideas you wanted to put on screen?

FOWLER: I I definitely think there was some trust established from the first film and it was all the same people, we'd been kind of through the fires together in terms of just ... Getting any movie made, there's certainly challenges along the way, so once you've been through that, you just can't help but come out on the other side with just a better relationship, a better sense of trust, and just having sort of established the world of the movie, of this sort of Sonic movie and the tone and the characters. It really freed us up to sort of just focus on story and how do we grow the world and how do we give audiences a bigger movie, but retain all those key components that they loved about the first.

Obviously, every frame of screen time that has Tails, Knuckles or Sonic costs real money, and I'm curious, how is it in the writing process and the development process of figuring out how much we can use these characters on-screen? Like based on our budget we can do 42 minutes of VFX? How does that get figured out before you actually start you making the movie, because you can't put Sonic in every frame.

FOWLER: I That would be a very responsible way of working to do the math beforehand, but I think you kind of have to, as naive as this may sound, you have to at least start with what would be, if money were no object and you start from the best creative version of the film, and sure, it's going to, it's going to become subject to the challenges of budgets and schedules and money and all that, but at the very least you want to put forward the most idealized, best version of the story, and yeah, then it just becomes, "Okay, what can we afford to do? What do we absolutely need?" It's just a process, but I definitely think on this second one, everybody wanted a bigger movie, everybody wanted to introduce these characters that fans have just been waiting for, Tails and Knuckles, and so there was certainly an understanding that we were going to set out to tell a much bigger story. So it was great to at least have that context in the early days and have that kind of mission to give fans a much bigger movie, but again, to sort of keep all of what they loved about the first.

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Image via Paramount

Was it always going to be called Sonic the Hedgehog 2?

FOWLER: I Yeah, I don't think I remember any other versions. To be honest, the title is one of those things that tends to get sort of put on the back burner as you really try to drill down on the story and get all that stuff, but Sonic the Hedgehog 2 felt like a natural progression.

Did you know, making the first film, was the intention always that the sequel, if you got to make it, would have Knuckles and Tails?

FOWLER: I We definitely sort of set out with that kind of timeline. I have sort of drawn my inspiration from just my experience as a kid and sort of the first Sonic game in 1991. It was as simple as Sonic and Robotnik, and then Sonic two introduced Tails. So the progression of the games and of that timeline is what was most familiar to me and sort of what was emotional to me, so it just felt like the right timeline, just to go back to where it all started and to just introduce the characters the way they were introduced in the progression of the games.

So, yeah, but it was hard knowing that Tails and Knuckles are incredible characters and we'd have so much fun telling stories with, it was hard to hold them back in that first film, but I'm really glad we did, because now it's such a great watershed moment now for fans to get to see Tails and Knuckles on the big screen and see Knuckles just kicking ass and being awesome, and I just really could not be more excited for fans to see more.

For people that aren't familiar with Knuckles, how would you categorize his powers and the level of his powers, if you will, compared to Sonic's abilities?

FOWLER: I I always have kind of joked he's like the Terminator or the Winter Soldier coming into our movie world where he's spent his life training to be a warrior. The echidnas are all about honor. Everything about him is a total contrast to Sonic. Sonic has no training, Sonic sort of flies by the seat of his pants, he has no discipline, and Knuckles is all disciplined. So it was always about, sort of from a storytelling standpoint, all of the great contrasts we could create between these two characters, and just put them on a collision course in a really great way, and just see that Sonic's got a lot to learn.

I think of it as like Sonic's been in one fight, really. He beat Robotnik at the end of the first movie, but he's got a lot of learning to do before he can become sort of the true hero, and that's what's great about bringing in Knuckles, is it's going to test Sonic in all these great ways, and I think fans are just going to love seeing how they go at it, and just what that does for Sonic's sort of hero arc.

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Image via Paramount

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Are we going to be seeing a Sonic Rocky montage in this movie training to fight Knuckles?

FOWLER: I Believe me, the temptation has always been there. I won't say one way or the other, but yeah, how can your mind not go to Rocky IV, right?

The Sonic games have other characters that the fans love. Are there any sort of like easter eggs that you're planting in this movie or nods to other characters that might be in a third film, if you're lucky enough to make it?

FOWLER: I I will say that one of my favorite experiences from the first film is being in theaters and sort of sneaking in at the end of a screening for Tails to show up, and just seeing the reaction in the crowd. People and kids just absolutely losing their minds and yelling at the screen. So how can you not want to continually tease new additions to the world, to the Sonic movie world, and I've got a list of favorites, that's a mile long. So it's great to have 30 years of Sonic games and comics and animated series and all that material to sort of pull from in order to build the world out. There's just so much opportunity to tell more stories and to bring in more characters.

What can you tease about Jim Carrey's role in the sequel?

FOWLER: I Only just that, as incredible as Jim was in the first movie, I feel like this version of Robotnik has allowed him to just go even further and tap into all the stuff that everyone loves about Jim Carrey. He just loves playing this character, has so much fun doing it, brings so many ideas every day to the set. It's just completely his creation, and I think audiences are just going to have such an amazing time with it. How can you not? The mustache is amazing. He has literally transformed himself into the Eggman that the fans know from the games, and it's awesome.

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Image via Paramount

I am a huge fan of Jim's work, and I thought he was fantastic in the first one. What is it actually like for you as a director trying to wield that energy that comes off him when he's in the zone?

FOWLER: I It's really just giving him the information he needs in terms of what we're doing in the film and knowing how that scene sort of plays into the broader sort of storyline, and then just unleashing him. He really is just the energy he brings, the intelligence just as an actor. He has such incredible instincts just about movies in general, let alone about the character he plays. So yeah, he's just an incredible resource. He's made so many films. He's just got such an incredible range of talents. It's awesome. I can't believe I've had the opportunity now to make two movies with him, having just grown up and loved so many of his movies as a kid. So it really is just extraordinary.

When you're making the first film, you obviously are just hoping this is going to work, it's going to be a hit and you'll be able to make a sequel. Now that you know that fans have responded, that the first film did so well, you are obviously spending more money on the sequel, it's a bigger movie, how much are you already thinking about Sonic 3?

FOWLER: Of course. Even if somebody didn't ask me to be thinking about ideas for future installments, it would be impossible not to. Even as we're working through the visual effects and animation on this film, it's impossible not to already get excited and to be starting to scheme about all the directions that the story could go, what new characters coming in, the impact that they could have. It's the best part of the creative process when it's just kind of a blank canvas and you can really just start to have blue sky ideas, even if, again, it' not in an official capacity. If the request comes through to start laying the blueprints for another Sonic film, I will be armed and ready with all kinds of ideas. I would just love to get that opportunity.

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Image via Paramount

Before the first movie came out, you guys redesigned Sonic based on fan feedback, which everyone was really happy with the redesign. When you were working on Knuckles for the sequel, were you guys showing the design to fans to make sure that you weren't going to go through something similar?

FOWLER: I Well, once we had kind of done the redesign from the first film, it kind of, in a lot of ways, these characters, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, they share so many kind of design aesthetics, so it helped having sort of gotten sort of Sonic worked out. It definitely informed a lot of the choices on Tails and Knuckles, and obviously, audiences got a look at the movie version of Tails at the end of the first film, so a lot of that sort of information and experience went into Knuckles. We did kind of have the benefit, in a weird way, obviously we have an on set reference, which is kind of low rent and crude compared to what the characters end up looking like in CG when they've got fur and lots of fidelity and detail, but there was kind of a spy photo taken one day of the stand-in Knuckles model just out in the street in broad daylight, and the fans actually responded very positively even to that very early, very crude version.

In a lot of ways was kind of…I think we all breathed a little sigh of relief knowing that what we were going to put movie was going to look even better than that, but at least it sort of put something out there for fans to kind of comment on, and the fact that everyone really seemed to be on board with it kind of felt like its own little focus group or focus testing. So in a weird way that it kind of worked out, but it's just awesome to finally give fans the real deal version of the character last night in the trailer, and man, he steals so many scenes in the movie, and Idris is so amazing. I can't wait for fans and audiences to see more.

So what you're saying is that the cardboard stand that was accidentally left out was you leaving it out to make sure that fans liked the design?

FOWLER: I Sure, sure. I'll never tell, Steve. Yeah, you're onto me.