Detective Pikachu’s Photography Director Almost Worked On Sonic Movie, Is ‘Glad’ Pikachu Doesn’t Look Like That

It looks like John Mathieson, the photography director of Detective Pikachu, really dodged a huge bullet in his career.

In a recent interview with Newsweek, Mathieson revealed that he actually almost worked on Sonic the Hedgehog’s upcoming CGI film! When asked about the recent Sonic trailer which received huge fan outrage (and pushed its production team to promise changes), Mathieson did not mince his words:

“Funny enough, I was offered [Sonic the Hedgehog] and after watching the trailer I thought I’m so glad we don’t look like that. If all we’re talking about is how these two films look, our film is better than Sonic the Hedgehog and I’m sorry, I don’t care who I upset by saying that, but I think it looks better.

There’s no reason why you can’t shoot a film like [Detective Pikachu] or Sonic the Hedgehog on film. If you had, [Sonic the Hedgehog] would look more realistic. I look at Sonic the Hedgehog and I just go ‘yeah whatever.’”

Harsh words, but Mathieson does make some important observations. The two movies could not look anymore different in terms of presentation.

We’ll see how the Detective Pikachu film fares when it hits theaters this month. Meanwhile, the Sonic movie team will really need to work hard if they want to fix things by their film’s November premiere window.