Takashi Iizuka Says Sonic’s Popularity Is Still “Only Halfway There,” Recalls Being Told to “Surpass Disney”

Sonic the Hedgehog may be celebrating 35 years, with blockbuster movies, games, comics and more under his belt, but Takashi Iizuka apparently doesn’t think the blue blur is anywhere near finished yet.

In fact, the Sonic series boss believes his popularity is still only “partway there.”

Speaking alongside Kazuyuki Hoshino and Jun Senoue in the Sonic 35th Anniversary roundtable published in CONTINUE Vol.90, Iizuka looked ahead to where he believes the series still has room to grow, while revealing just how ambitious SEGA’s aspirations for Sonic have been from the very beginning.

The discussion begins with Hoshino pointing towards perhaps the biggest change to Sonic’s position outside of video games in recent years: the movie series.

Hoshino describes Sonic the Hedgehog‘s move into film as one of the major turning points in the series’ 35-year history, before asking Iizuka about his involvement.

According to Iizuka, efforts to bring Sonic to the big screen had actually been underway since before he moved to Los Angeles, and getting there was anything but straightforward.

“We negotiated with various partners, and the project would start up, collapse, then be revived again, over and over.”

It was only in 2020 that those efforts finally materialised as Sonic the Hedgehog.

Now that the movie series has continued beyond that original film, Iizuka says he wants cinema to keep growing into one of the important forms of media for the Sonic franchise.

And that is where the conversation gets particularly interesting.

Hoshino remarks that expanding into a medium as large as film has helped Sonic establish an even greater presence.

Iizuka’s response?

They’re still not there yet.

“Actually, from our perspective, Sonic’s popularity is still only partway there.”

That’s quite a statement to make about a character who has been running around for 35 years, but Iizuka then explains the enormous target Sonic’s creators had in mind from practically day one.

According to him, the development team behind the original Sonic the Hedgehog used to say:

“Aim for Disney.”

And that ambition apparently continued after Iizuka himself joined SEGA.

“When I first joined SEGA, I was told, ‘Use Sonic to surpass Disney.’”

It didn’t even stop there.

Iizuka recalls people at SEGA talking about the possibility that one day Sonic could become big enough to have his own theme park.

“They would talk about these huge dreams, like, ‘Someday we’ll build a theme park.’”

Thirty-five years later, Iizuka readily admits that Sonic still hasn’t reached the enormous destination those early developers were dreaming about.

But rather than treating that as a failure, he appears to see everything that has happened since as another step towards it.

The movies are particularly important in that respect because they can introduce Sonic to an audience far beyond people who already play the games.

“Thirty-five years have passed, but we still haven’t reached that point. Now that the movie has become a reality, I want to bring Sonic’s appeal to the many people who still haven’t played the Sonic game series.”

It’s an interesting way of framing Sonic’s current position.

The franchise has expanded dramatically from the Mega Drive mascot that SEGA was once hoping could challenge Mario. Sonic now exists across games, Hollywood movies, animation, comics, merchandise, music and countless collaborations, while the character himself has become recognizable to audiences who may never have touched a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

And yet, from Iizuka’s perspective, that isn’t the finish line.

Apparently we’re still somewhere along the road to that old “surpass Disney” dream.

Whether a Sonic theme park ever actually comes out of it is another matter.

But considering that “Sonic movie” spent years as one of those ideas that repeatedly started, collapsed and came back from the dead before finally becoming reality, perhaps writing off some of SEGA’s old ambitions would be a little premature.