Paramount just released the first poster for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and it’s really weird

Ready to start off your week being utterly repulsed at the sight of a new live-action Sonic the Hedgehog?

Paramount on Monday released the first poster for the upcoming Sonic movie, which will combine live-action and animation à la Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. The look of Sonic is unique to say the least, and downright disturbing to say the most. For whatever reason, the beloved video game character looks strangely human and unexpectedly buff on the poster, less like a cartoon hedgehog and more like a track and field athlete dressing as Sonic for Halloween. Considering he's a hedgehog, he's also a lot furrier than expected, as were a lot of the Pokemon in the recent trailer for the live-action Detective Pikachu movie.

The film's producers insisted in an interview with IGN that Sonic's new look was necessary so that he would fit in with the live-action world. "He's not going to feel like a Pixar character would because I don't think that's the right aesthetic to make it feel like part of our world," producer Tim Miller said. Speaking about Sonic's speed, Miller again stressed the importance of "keeping it grounded and keeping it realistic," because if there's anything that has defined Sonic, a video game franchise about a blue hedgehog that looks very little like a hedgehog and who pursues an evil mustachioed scientist by traveling at lightning speeds, it's grounded realism.

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The Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which will feature Ben Schwartz as Sonic and Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik, hits theaters in November 2019.