Across three live-action films, Sonic the Hedgehog has become a bona fide movie star, bringing in more than $1.2 billion at the box office. A fourth Sonic the Hedgehog movie is in the works for 2027, but Sega and Paramount Pictures' moneymaker will make a surprise return to movie theaters well before then. Paramount revealed Sonic's next cinematic outing on Wednesday, with the mascot making a surprise appearance in the second trailer for The Angry Birds Movie 3.
While Sonic's appearance in the third Angry Birds movie is something of a surprise, it also makes perfect sense — from a corporate synergy perspective.
The Angry Birds Movie 3's second trailer includes a brief scene with banana-shaped bird Chuck, who is voiced by Josh Gad, racing alongside Sonic the Hedgehog. Given that Chuck is known as the fastest resident of Bird Island, a speed contest between the two video game characters makes contextual sense. How does Sonic the Hedgehog find himself in the cinematic world of Angry Birds? That's not clear yet, but the cameo may simply be a dream sequence or hallucination — or even a non sequitur, because the plot of an Angry Birds film seems tertiary to physical comedy, avian plays on words, and gross-out gags. (Whereas the first Angry Birds Movie 3 trailer was full of piss, the second offers some surprising projectile vomiting in an unsettling motherbirding moment.)
From a cold corporate perspective, though, the Sonic-Angry Birds crossover makes perfect sense. Sega acquired Rovio, the Finnish company behind the Angry Birds games, back in 2023 for a whopping $775 million.
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