2024 has been a long time coming for Shadow the Hedgehog fans. The Year of Shadow has been nothing but joy and with the third film in the Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise on the way, fans can finally see the enigmatic anti-hero on the big screen! But don’t worry, you won’t have to wait much longer, because on December 12th you can jump straight into the Shadow’s Air Shoes movie on PS4 and PS5! The just-announced Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Movie Pack lets you immerse yourself in gameplay and cinematics voiced by the iconic Keanu Reeves!

We spoke with series producer Shun Nakamura to get some deeper insight into the behind-the-scenes of this groundbreaking content and what we can expect when it releases later this year.

At what point in development was it decided to include DLC in the title?

Nakamura-san: This title is designed not only to please fans of Sonic games, but also for those who see the Sonic movie and become fans of Sonic and Shadow for the first time.

But of course we didn’t expect Shadow from the movie to be included in this game, because the world for the movie and the game are different. We thought it would be a challenge to do that.

However, we saw an almost festival-like opportunity where the movie and the game launch almost at the same time. We decided to go ahead with it and start working on film-related content, development of which started last fall.

What was the thought process behind shooting the film version of Shadow?

Nakamura-san: Since the game and the movie pack contents will be released before the movie, we thought it would be ideal if people played the game and expressed their feelings about Shadow, and then went out to see the movie. After experiencing the movie, they will hopefully want to come back and play the game again as Shadow.

We thought that with so many new Sonic fans loving the films, this might be the perfect motivation to jump in and play Sonic

Hopefully this makes this holiday season and the Year of Shadow even more exciting for Sonic (and Shadow) fans of all kinds.

How is this content pack related to the film? (Without spoilers of course!)

Nakamura-san: This content does not contain any story that is necessarily directly related to the film. Rather, as you can see in the trailer, it’s set in Tokyo, which is where Shadow visits in the film.

The development team also lives in Tokyo, so we tried to make this environment as enjoyable as a Sonic game, but also show the Tokyo-like similarity clearly. We even set out to research the actual area used in the game for inspiration.

We are very excited to play as Shadow in a real existing city, so please look forward to it.

And how does this DLC fit into the larger Sonic X Shadow Generations game? How is this experience different?

Nakamura-san: In short, it should be positioned as bonus content.

In the base game, Shadow has his own story, including achieving his new Doom Powers and reliving the memories of his creation, which is unique to this game.

There are things that are a little different in the film – which is why I think it would be appropriate to say this as bonus content. But you can play and control Shadow as you played in the base game.

We can’t reveal too much, but stay tuned to see how it relates to the world of cinema!

Do you have any fun stories about working with the Sonic Movie team?

Nakamura-san: Information about the film was revealed to very few members, even within Sega, so when we developed this content we were working with a very limited set of materials provided by Paramount. We discussed and worked mainly with Iizuka-san, who was clearly also aware of the film.

We haven’t actually seen the final scenes of the movie yet, so we’re curious to see how close our game will end up being to the movie!

What was it like working with the confidential Hollywood voice talent for this DLC?

It was an incredibly secretive process, so when we started implementing the voice into the game, we weren’t actually told who this voice is. The voice recording was done by Iizuka-san in the US, so when we received the recorded voice files, we listened to them and felt: is this that actor…?, so we were also surprised after the official announcement from Paramount!

The Sonic the Hedgehog Movie 3 Pack is included with the Sonic Our conversation with Nakamura-san was short (he’s busy!), but after a conversation we know he’s cooking something very special. Shadow fans, dinner is almost served.