'Sonic the Movie' Unavailable for Licensing Due to Missing Paperwork

Don't hold your breath for a re-release of 1999's 'Sonic the Movie' anytime soon - according to distribution company Discotek Media, SEGA is missing key licensing paperwork that could prevent the anime from ever seeing the light of day again outside of Japan.

In a Q&A streamed a few hours ago, the Discotek team spoke about the Sonic OVA anecdotally when answering a question regarding a different anime license (Dominion Tank Police, from Toshiba).

The show's host explained that the reason they could not license Sonic, despite their best efforts (and SEGA's apparent willingness to make it happen), was because of missing paperwork relating to music and voice actor royalties.

"SEGA owns it, they know they own it, we were gonna license it, but they don't [know where] the paperwork for the music and the voices [are]," said one of the show's hosts. "They don't know who they have to pay residuals to on it and... [that's] kind of where the logjam is, they don't know where that is, so it can't be licensed out beyond Japan... in Japan I think it's still available on streaming, but it can't be licensed outside there because they don't know who to pay and what to pay them."

This only appears to impact the international/English language version of the movie - in Japan, 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (as it's simply known there) originally released in 1996 as a two-part feature, and was a close collaboration between SEGA Japan and production company Pierrot. In 1999, SEGA partnered with ADV Films on the English-language dub and released the product as a full-length movie.

However, ADV Films has long since been defunct; the parent company, AD Vision, shuttered in 2009, and the any paperwork relating to their subsidiary's projects have likely been scattered to the four winds, along with a number of its own licenses (many of which ended up with Funimation).

So for now, SEGA is forced to make the Sonic OVA unavailable outside of Japan. Let's hope that paperwork turns up under someone's couch or something.

You can catch the anecdote in full via the video below (at 1:49:54):