After the incredible work from Sonic Team on the excellent Sonic X Shadow Generations for Switch, the 'Year of Shadow' continues with the movie release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on 20th December 2024.
To help keep the hype going, director Jeff Fowler answered fan questions during a Sonic Revolution online expo (thanks, Sonic Stadium) and commented on the sheer commitment from actor Keanu Reeves in bringing the role of Shadow to life.
Now, we all know Reeves is an absolute delight who gives his all when it comes to his career and giving the fans what they want (you might even say he's 'The One' - chortle!), but it's nice to hear that he's been taking his role as Sonic's angsty rival very seriously.
Here's what Fowler had to say:
"It's so awesome that we got Keanu Reeves to voice the character, and he was so fantastic to work with. I think he thinks the character is awesome. I think he definitely understood what we were going for and was very excited to kinda do his version of it, but he, like all the cast, really wants to get it right, really cares.
"He would give us so many different versions of line readings and just wanna keep going. He was not just sort of showing up and just reading the script into a microphone. Like he really wanted to create a very fan-faithful version of the character. He did research. In our first meeting, he very clearly had gone and done his homework, which was awesome.
"And so, I just can't say enough wonderful things about Keanu and what he brought to the character, and just the experience of making this movie."
It's quite funny trying to imagine Reeves sitting in his lounge and making his way through Shadow The Hedgehog as part of his research, but hey, maybe he's a fan! Who knows.
Either way, it sounds like Sonic 3 will continue the movie franchise's efforts to remain faithful to the games, which is lovely to hear. Although there are some things we'd probably change about the first two films, we're happy to say that we're big fans of Fowler's work on bringing the Blue Blur to life.