"Ugly Sonic" wasn't a PR stunt. Too much time and money was spent on it to be a ruse.
Paramount simply had 0 faith in Sonic and just didn’t care about making something with quality, but Jeff Fowler and Pat Casey were fighting to make it something at least close to the source material despite their circumstances.
Otherwise, Sonic would've ended up just like the CGI movies for Garfield, Smurfs, and the Chipmunks. We got lucky the revision was done and they leaned in more with Sonic lore.
