Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Sonic the Hedgehog 3!

Pat Casey and Josh Miller are back and reaching new creative heights with Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The creative duo have been friends since high school, going on to work on a wide range of projects together, including multiple National Lampoon movies and the dark fantasy comedy show Golan the Insatiable. In addition to being the main scribes of the Sonic movies, ed by John Wittington for the second and third movies, Casey and Miller also co-wrote the Santa Claus action comedy Violent Night, being attached to pen the script for its sequel.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 sees the titular blue hedgehog and his friends, Tails and Knuckles, confronted by the arrival of Shadow the Hedgehog, a figure who has been locked up for 50 years and sets out on a quest for revenge for the death of Maria Robotnik. With G.U.N. turning against them due to its director not trusting the trio, Team Sonic find themselves reluctantly partnering up with Jim Carrey's Dr. Robotnik to try and stop Shadow. However, when they learn that Robotnik's thought-to-be-dead grandfather released Shadow and is teaming up with his grandson, Sonic must race against the clock to save the world again.

Ben Schwartz returns to lead the ensemble Sonic the Hedgehog 3 cast in the titular role, alongside Carrey as both Ivo and Gerald Robotnik, Idris Elba as Knuckles, Colleen O'Shaughnessey as Tails, Lee Madjoub as Agent Stone, James Marsden as Tom and Tika Sumpter as Maddie, as well as the franchise introductions of Keanu Reeves as Shadow and Krysten Ritter as G.U.N. Director Rockwell. The movie has already gotten off to a massive start, scoring the best reviews of the Sonic franchise and setting a new Rotten Tomatoes record for the best-reviewed video game movie adaptation of all-time.

In honor of the movie's release, ScreenRant interviewed Pat Casey and Josh Miller to discuss Sonic the Hedgehog 3, their thoughts on the record-setting reviews for the film, whether there was a game plan for the story if Jim Carrey elected not to return, the movie's epic finale and potential futures for Robotnik and Shadow, as well as the post-credits character introductions and Violent Night 2.

Sonic The Hedgehog 3's Reviews Are Something Of A Relief For Casey & Miller

"...third movies and trilogies, there's been a bit of a curse involved..."

ScreenRant: First and foremost, guys, congrats on this movie. I love that it's already getting such high praise. How does it feel for you both now that you're here, and you're seeing these franchise-high reviews from people?

Josh Miller: Pretty great. It's not like it's unprecedented, but for three movies into a series, to have the general fan consensus seem to be that they just keep getting better?

Pat Casey: Yeah, third movies and trilogies, there's been a bit of a curse involved, with pretty rare exceptions.

Josh Miller: I think we all joked a lot about that at the beginning of like, "Uh oh, here we go." [Laughs] Especially if you compare, say, the similarities between Shadow and a certain dark doppelgänger from another superhero franchise part 3 that fans were not quite as excited with when it came out.

Pat Casey: Should we have had a scene of just Sonic walking around, being a jerk and dancing like a moron?

Josh Miller: Emo Sonic. [Laughs] I think it actually would've really fit well in Sonic 3.

Directly Adapting Games For Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Was Both "Fun & Tricky" For The Duo

"...we really wanted to be true to Shadow's emotional story..."

Well, for the fourth one, you've got the groundwork now that you've got the idea! Now you gotta go into it with that one. I've been a huge champion of the Sonic Adventure games since I was a kid. They're obviously a little janky, but they're still close to my heart, so I loved when you guys dove into Adventure 2 for this, as well as the Shadow the Hedgehog game. But I'm curious, what is it like, from a story perspective, coming up with both an original story, but also one that pulls from the games directly?

Josh Miller: It was both fun and tricky compared to the first two films. As a Sonic fan, you know, those are drawing from games that had much more rudimentary storylines. Like, for Knuckles, it was pretty much just, "He's trying to guard the Emerald, Robotnik's manipulating him into thinking that Sonic is a bad guy, and then at some point, he realizes the truth, and they team up."

Pat Casey: And that was great, because that gave us a broad outline, but then everything else we could just make what we wanted. Whereas for this one, we really wanted to be true to Shadow's emotional story, and the Maria stuff, even though some details were changed to sort of simplify things, or make things make a little more sense within the context of our real world that these movies take place. Whereas in the Sonic Adventure games, there's humans, but it's like, "Is that our world? Is that another world?" It's pretty unclear. [Laughs]

Josh Miller: [Laughs] Yeah, so it was definitely trickier, and we feel like our job on this franchise is to just kind of blast Jeff Fowler with ideas, and he serves as the filter through what makes it in the movie. We know he was very concerned with getting the Maria elements and all that backstory stuff correct.

Pat Casey: Even though, yeah, we made some alterations, obviously, and brought Gerald into the present rather than existing only in flashbacks. But part of that was realizing that we could trick Jim into playing a second character. And then once we had that, we were like, "Well, we've got to feature this character, we got Jim Carrey playing him." And just the idea of the two Jims interacting was too good to up.

Josh Miller: Even for him, we were told he got very excited when Jeff presented the idea to him.

The Producers Were "Confident They Could Woo Jim Back" For Another Movie

Casey & Miller Did, However, Have To Make It "Attractive For Him"

Jim is clearly having a lot of fun with that and with this franchise. But obviously, there was a big hubbub about whether he would return for 3. Did you actually come up with a game plan for if he didn't come back? And if so, can you share with me what it was?

Josh Miller: No, I mean, that's above our pay grade. We don't entirely know what the producers or Paramount did or didn't know, but it was presented to us early on that they felt confident they could woo Jim back.

Pat Casey: But with the caveat of like, as long as we make this attractive for him. So definitely, we wanted to come up with something really good that's not a repeat, because Jim doesn't want to repeat himself. We had to give him something fresh to play, and giving him two characters, and also really sending Ivo on this emotional journey with a little bit of a redemption arc, teaming Ivo up with Sonic. We wanted to make it so attractive to Jim that when he saw it, there was no way he could say no.

Josh Miller: Which I think is really the coolest thing about Jim is that I feel like, if you look at other franchises, it usually seems like the star gets kind of lazier. You get to the point where, like, "Technically, I'm only in 10 minutes of this movie, but you can string it around so it still feels like I'm an important character." I feel like Jim just keeps wanting to get challenged. The fact that three movies in, now, he had makeup on as both characters, he had to do so much more than he did in the first two films.

Pat Casey: God bless him.

Robotnik's Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Ending Was Purposely Definitive In Case Carrey Is Done

"...he's definitely, definitely, definitely dead...unless..."

So, I did want to get into some spoilers. Ivo's fate in Sonic the Hedgehog 3's ending seems a little more definitive this time around than it was in 2. What can you tell me about coming up with that ending for him in this film in comparison to the previous two?

Josh Miller: Well, obviously, we can't talk about what is or isn't in the future, but I think it was the idea that, if it had to be an ending, what would be an ending that felt right, but obviously could maybe not be an ending?

Pat Casey: We knew there was a very real possibility that this might be his last one, and it might be for real, but we wanted to make it a satisfying capper for him. So, if this is the last we saw of Ivo, he had a good, complete story with a real ending that feels satisfying and felt earned.

Josh Miller: But we all hope it's not. [Laughs]

Pat Casey: I will say this, he's definitely, definitely, definitely dead...unless he survives somehow. [Laughs]

That's perfect. Leave me guessing one way or the other. I think it is an earned ending, one way or the other, but again, fingers crossed Jim wants to come back for 4.

Josh Miller: We always know. , Neal Moritz is producing these movies, and he also does Fast and the Furious, which has definitely demonstrated that life will find a way. If you make enough movies, that's a reason for fans to keep coming out.

Amy Rose Nearly Had A Bigger Role In The New Movie

"We talked long and hard..."

So, turning to the post credits. I'm also really excited that we got Amy Rose involved, and I know that you guys have been keen on bringing her in, as well. What was it like when you got the opportunity to do that? Did you pitch that to Jeff on the first movie, or, as you found you were pulling from Adventure for this one, that this was the right time to do it?

Josh Miller: I think maybe Amy came up for a brief moment on 2, just where you're blue sky [ideating], "What are all the things that could happen?" And it's kind of been the same story with all the sequels, is you don't want to do Amy dirty by having her show up and kind of barely be in the movie.

Pat Casey: We talked long and hard about including her in the body of Sonic 3, but then ultimately realized there was just too much going on already, and we didn't want to give her a short shrift. We didn't want to crowd Shadow out, but we also knew that there are a lot of fans who would love to see Amy, like girl fans, in particular. I've got little nieces, ever since they discovered Amy existed, they've been asking me where Amy is. [Laughs] They won't leave me alone. So we've definitely been like, "We got to get Amy in here soon."

Josh Miller: Yeah, I can't even necessarily say we pitched [her for this]. I think it's always felt, in some way, almost obvious who the character should be that gets introduced in the post-credits scene to the point where it's hard to even the first conversation about it, because it kind of feels like it was always [the plan]. Like, the moment that Tails wasn't going to be one of the main characters in Sonic 1, it was like, "Well, we'll tease him at the end, let fans know that the franchise is going to keep expanding."

Pat Casey: Including her in the franchise opened some things up, because Sonic went from a completely lonely little kid to he gained a family, he gained friends and teammates and arch foes. But, what's going to be the biggest challenge he's faced so far? Girls. He's growing up. [Chuckles]

Josh Miller: Our hedgehog's growing up. [Laughs]

There Are A Few Key Reasons Why Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Is Shorter (Despite More Characters)

"...we've always tried to keep these all at a reasonable length."

I really can't wait to see how you guys expand on that dynamic in the next one, because that has always been one of the funniest ones from the games, and it's going to be really interesting to see. So you guys mentioned, by the way, you know not wanting to crowd the movie too much, and I was kind of surprised when I saw that this is shorter than the last one. Obviously, this movie is as much for families as the adults who grew up with the games. How do you go about really finding the right length, so that you're not crowding, but that you're introducing as much as you can in a movie?

Josh Miller: Well, that we can't take credit for. In the writing process, you're just stuffing in as much as you can, and then things get pulled out.

Pat Casey: But also, knowing that our fan base includes a lot of kids, and kids get squirrelly, we've always tried to keep these all at a reasonable length.

Josh Miller: Yeah, and that was Toby Ascher, our producer, that was something on his mind. He's like, "This one? Gonna make it a little shorter." [Chuckles]

Pat Casey: And the way you achieve that, ultimately, is by cutting out all the little bits of dialogue that make things make sense. Certain things in the movie, I'm like, "Oh, why'd they cut that line that explained what's going on?" But I think the movie moves faster than the speed of logic, and it's all sort of implied. It's all there.

Pat Casey: And the way you achieve that, ultimately, is by cutting out all the little bits of dialogue that make things make sense. Certain things in the movie, I'm like, "Oh, why'd they cut that line that explained what's going on?" But I think the movie moves faster than the speed of logic, and it's all sort of implied. It's all there.

Casey & Miller Are Thrilled To Already Be Working On Sonic The Hedgehog 4

They Can't Share Their Character Wishlists, Though, Out Of Fear Of Spoilers

So, the timing of this interview is fortuitous, by the way, as we just got the news like an hour ago that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is already set up for a release. Obviously, you guys can't really talk much about it, so I would just love to hear what is it like to continue working on this franchise, knowing that Paramount is confident before this one has even come out?

Pat Casey: It's great to be part of a successful franchise that we've had two hit movies. Part 3 will hopefully be a hit, and we just hope that the franchise continues to grow and continues to expand the audience. It's been the same team on all these films, it's almost like a family thing, and it's just so exciting to see it grow. When the first movie was announced, no one gave us a chance. We were a bit of a laughing stock, even. So, it's really gratifying to have gotten the franchise to this point, really.

Obviously, I don't want you to spoil what's coming in 4, and you can't talk about what's coming, but who's at the top of your wishlists for video game characters to introduce next in this franchise?

Josh Miller: I feel like we can't say. [Laughs]

Pat Casey: [Laughs] Everyone keeps asking this question. I feel like we've been giving a different answer every time.

Josh Miller: Because we can't actually say, yeah. Our joke answer is always Big the Cat, but it's not even really a joke. It'd be fun to have Big the Cat.

Pat Casey: I want to see Sonic the Hedgehog fight Master Chief, that's what I want. [Chuckles]

Josh Miller: Yeah, there we go. [Laughs]

That would be a hell of a crossover to have. But then, you have it be Pablo Schreiber's Master Chief from the Halo TV show, and his helmet's off the whole time.

Pat Casey: [Laughs] Helmet off the whole time to maximally take advantage of the iconography. I don't know what they were thinking.

Casey & Miller Are Hard At Work On Violent Night 2's Script

"Mildly distracting to have Sonic 3 dropping the same time as our deadline..."

I do see I'm coming up on time, though, so I would love to ask — and Pat, I see it behind you there. I'm a huge fan of Violent Night here, I'm really keen to see the next one. I know that David recently teased that there's an update to come, hopefully, in the near future. And obviously, Nobody 2, another Leitch-produced franchise, is finally getting that sequel. What can you guys say about how progress is going on Violent Night 2?

Josh Miller: We're closing in on trying to get a draft out, so we're well underway. Mildly distracting to have Sonic 3 dropping at the same time as our deadline, but I guess champagne problems. [Laughs]

Pat Casey: Yeah, as soon as we get off this morning's interviews, we're right back into the Violent Night 2 salt mines, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I wish we had a date to announce, but we don't yet. But everybody really wants to get it going, so hopefully soon, we'll have more solid information. But it's a little hard to schedule around David Harbor currently, on of he's a busy man with certain other giant mega franchises that, unfortunately, seem to get scheduling priority over us, for some inexplicable reason.

About Sonic The Hedgehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog returns to the big screen this holiday season in his most thrilling adventure yet. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched in every way, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance in hopes of stopping Shadow and protecting the planet.

Check out our other Sonic the Hedgehog 3 interviews here:

• Ben Schwartz
• Jim Carrey
• James Marsden & Tika Sumpter
• Jeff Fowler
• Colleen O'Shaughnessey & Krysten Ritter
• Lee Madjoub

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now in theaters!