Sonic Prime’s lead wants big-budget game adaptations to use more traditional voice actors
The voice of Sonic in the upcoming Netflix series Sonic Prime wants to see more traditional voice actors get starring roles in big-budget game adaptations.
Canadian voice actor Deven Mack spoke to VGC ahead of Sonic Prime’s release on December 15, and we asked him where he stood on the current debate about Hollywood stars poaching the main roles in big-budget video game movies.
Video game movies have gained increasing relevance in Hollywood, with Pokemon, Sonic enjoying box-office success in recent years, and the Super Mario Movie planned for early next year.
Ryan Reynolds was cast as the voice of Pikachu in Detective Pikachu, while debate continues to rage over the casting of Chris Pratt as Mario in The Super Mario Bros movie, a role that has been played in the games by Charles Martinet for more than 25 years.
The first Sonic the Hedgehog movie cast Parks & Recreation star Ben Schwarz as Sonic, and its sequel cast Idris Elba as Knuckles. However, in a rare exception, the role of Tails was played by Colleen Ann O’Shaughnesse, who has been voicing Tails in games since 2014.
Sonic Prime’s Mack told VGC he’d like to see similar examples of specialist voice actors getting these roles instead.
“I would absolutely love to see more of that,” he said. “At the end of the day, I do understand why certain things go certain ways, for marketing purposes.
“But at the same time, there are some actors who are phenomenal, just great actors. Voice acting is still acting, and there are people on the live-action side of this who can just jump right in and can just go, and it’s really, really cool to see.
“But it still is a very specialised skill to be able to do voiceover. There’s crossover for sure: there’s really, really talented people across
Read more on videogameschronicle.com
