Special Report: MIP-TV - Sonic Underground

The hedgehog that captured the imagination of so many youngsters in the early part of this decade is making a return-and this time, he has company. Sonic Underground is an animated, half-hour strip set to debut, five days a week, in the spring of next year. This series will feature two long-lost siblings of the insect-eating mammal that first arrived in popular consciousness when Sega released its Sonic the Hedgehog video game in 1992. (Since then, the company has sold over 22 million Sonic games.) Sonia and Manic Hedgehog are the missing pieces of the triplet set to which Sonic belongs, and Sonic Underground is, in fact, a prequel to the original animated series. The first shows-one a network series, Sonic the Hedgehog; another produced for syndication, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog-were launched simultaneously in 1993.

Sonic Underground is a product of the teamwork among DIC Entertainment, Bohbot Kids Network (BKN) and Sega of America. The show is being produced by DIC in conjunction with DIC's French studio, LST (Le Studios Tex) Productions. (DIC and Sega had also partnered for these two earlier series.) Sega will introduce a new game featuring the new characters at a date that coincides with the show's debut.

Partners:

DIC Entertainment, U.S.A.

Le Studios Tex, France

Sega of America, U.S.A.

How the partnership began:

Early 1997

It is, says Cynthia Wilkes, director of licensing at Sega of America, a tough time for the worlds of animation and licensing right now thanks to the proliferation of players. As such, she believes, the secret is to fall back on characters that have some pre-awareness. "My opinion is that the market got overcrowded and it was very confusing out there. A lot of the things that were put in place, as far as characters and properties went, didn't work, or didn't reach the expectation levels that licensors had hoped for. Now, there are a lot of us out there reaching back into the tried and true."

Sega and DIC decided to develop a fresh new series for Sonic, based on the huge overall success the character enjoyed in the past. "Sonic is our Mickey Mouse, and I thought it was time to reinvigorate the character in animation," says Wilkes.

Since their first co-production, says Robby London, DIC's executive vice president of creative affairs, DIC has worked to stay in touch with Sega. "We saw, to our delight, how successful the series had been and we felt that there was really an equity in the character."

Sega expresses an interest. DIC goes off to do some more development.

March 1997

DIC approaches Sega with a more fleshed-out description of its vision. Sonic Underground has a totally new twist. In addition to the introduction of Sonia and Manic, this show is musically themed. Sonic and his siblings are in a band and the music, raves Wilkes, "is absolutely incredible."

"I loved it," Wilkes recalls. "For them to come up with the whole Sonic Underground theme, with music and introducing the brother and sister, I thought that was ingenious. They thought out of the box with that one. Rather than Sonic's typical world-and he's a video game character-they really reached and made him much more contemporary."

Spring 1997

Because anything that involves development around Sonic's character has to be approved at a higher level, DIC's president, Andy Heyward, flies over to Japan to meet with the president of Sega, Hayao Nakayama. The new concept wins approval absolutely. After that, says London, "it was up to us to see if we could put together the rest of the domestic and international pieces to make it viable."

Mid 1997

DIC, the creative force behind the project, hires writers and initiates some of the story premises for each episode. Sega is intimately involved with every stage of the process, and the companies are in constant communication. At one point, the team hits a minor bump in the characterization of Sonia. "Certainly, DIC knows Sonic, because they've worked on him before," Wilkes explains. "But with Sonia, Sega's concern is to make sure she isn't the damsel in distress, that she has her own strong personality and is projected as a forceful, intelligent female character to provide a good role model." To get to that place, she admits, required a number of "little tweaks to her character along the way."

DIC approaches BKN with the new Sonic idea. The former has an ongoing output deal with the latter-the syndicator of the original Sonic series-and has pre-agreed to do a certain number of shows with the network over the coming years. "It was a natural first place to go with it," says London.

Kaaren Lee Brown, executive vice president of acquisitions and developments at BKN, says that Sonic, in its original series, did extremely well for the network, so much so that BKN brought it back into the lineup this year (after being off the air for at least two seasons). "It's a real popular show with our target audience, which is kids, primarily six to 11. So, when we were talking to DIC and they were interested in bringing in a new Sonic series, all they had to do was say, `you might not know this, but Sonic was not an only child-he was one of triplets,' and, well, not to make it too simplistic, but it was a done deal from that point on."