The new Sonic 2 movie poster lacks a few notable names, including Tails voice actor Colleen O’Shaughnessey. This is especially strange, given how prominent the character has been featured in the movie’s marketing. Tails isn’t exactly a minor character. Also missing are Tika Sumpter (Maddie Wachowski) and Lee Majdoub (Agent Stone), despite the former also being on the poster.
So did Paramount simply forget to add their names? No. Who gets credit on movie posters and how they’re credited is actually rather complicated and involves a lot of negotiations with agents, fees, and what individual actors want. While this is pure speculation, it likely came down to how negotiations went. For anyone curious about the nature of poster billing credits, you can find a helpful article on the subject here.
Something similar occurred with Marvel’s Avengers Endgame, when actress Danai Gurira wasn’t credited on that movie’s poster despite being on it. Fan outcry eventually led to her name being added.
Thankfully, Sonic fans aren’t exactly being silent over this. On Twitter, many are voicing their displeasure over O’Shaughnessey’s omission:
It’s not often I’ll just outright state an opinion in a news article, especially on behalf of this website, but I’m going to go ahead and do there here: yes, Colleen O’Shaughnessey absolutely deserves to be on this poster, and Paramounts needs to make that change now.
Sadly voice actors are treated unfairly in the industry….
Unless there a famous celebrity they don’t care.
Personally Colleen should be on there. It should say Ben, Colleen, iris and Jim Carrey.
Seeing there the main in this film.
It would be better to have her name on it.
Movie posters aren’t about “giving credit” to actors, it’s about marketing and negotiations. It’s an ADVERTISEMENT. This is the most basic, common-sense thing that everyone seems to be missing. The actors who get top-billing have NOTHING TO DO with their role in the film – it’s how bankable the NAMES are. Schwartz is the lead, while Marsden, Elba and Carrey are the big-ticket names the studio paid top-dollar to help market the movie. It’s really that simple.
The fact that Sonic fans are crabby about Tails’ voice actor not being on the poster is indicative of how loose their grasp on reality it. …It’s not about “fairness”, it’s not about equality… general audiences don’t know who Colleen O’Shaughnessey is, and I doubt many of them know Tika Sumpter either. It might be symptomatic of some, political incorrectness in the industry, but the reality people are ignoring is that no one is going to see this movie because those 2 people are in it….and I wouldn’t hesitate to say the same about Marsden or Schwartz either, because they’re not exactly A-tier either.
The top stars are going to get the top billing. It’s the business of film. Deal with it.
I don’t understand why you’re being so cold and patronising towards the fans in this situation. I acknowledge the truth in what you’re saying but just because there’s an industry-standard doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t speak up for change. At the end of the day, the rallying being done by the community here is an extended show of love and appreciation for Colleen’s tenure as the character. Even if it doesn’t actually end up affecting any change on the poster, the gesture of the campaign itself is extremely meaningful. Have a heart and stop raining on people’s parade with your ruthless pedantry.
Damn dude save some unnecessary aggression for the rest of us
Actually…and I hate to bring up that I know this, the MLP movie from 2017 had two posters: one for the more named actors such as Michael Pena and Liev Schreiber but then a second version that had the names of the MLP Friendship is Magic cast, as they were voicing the main characters.
So it’s not impossible to dedicate a theatrical poster to the actors performing the roles of the main characters if they aren’t the top draw of the film.
This just dropped. While the main poster didn’t mention Colleen, the Tails poster does.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sonic-the-hedgehog-2-new-character-posters-tails-knuckles
This seems to be recent, but a version of the poster that also credits Tika Stumper was shown off in the UK. Keep in mind that the colors are off here though.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/337695672864342018/946935376768041050/latest.png