The Dalian Wanda-owned studio announced plans to deliver a live-action movie, “Detective Pikachu”, which will feature the popular little yellow character.
Advertisement
Deadline has confirmed that Legendary Pictures has locked down a deal with The Pokemon Company to produce a live-action Pokemon film.
Universal Pictures will handle distribution of the film outside Japan, as they have done for Legendary for years, while Toho will distribute it within Japan. Details of how Detective Pikachu’s story will be told are being kept quiet for the moment, though the film is being fast-tracked for production start in 2017. Yet fans have clamored to hear DeVito’s voice come out of the electric mouse’s smiling face since the first trailer dropped for Great Detective Pikachu, a Nintendo 3DS game that launched in Japan in February. The film rights were reported as being auctioned last week, and Legendary probably paid a decent sum to win the glory, given how much hype the franchise is now riding. Even stranger, Great Detective Pikachu is now only available in Japan, and many Pokemon fans don’t even know it exists. Whether that plays out as a Garfield-esque foray into the cinematic world of live-action films, or something else entirely, still remains to be seen.
The first video game, launched for Game Boy, was released in 1996.
The narrative of the game is that a Pikachu (who is better at solving crimes than he is at zapping his kinfolk with electricity) teams up with a young boy to solve crimes in their city.
Players are known as trainers and much catch as many Pokemon as they can before utilising their unique skills during battles at local “gyms”.
Advertisement
Every curmudgeonly person who has railed against the popularity of Pokmon Go is about to get slightly more curmudgeonly. The first film, Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back, was released in 1998 and there have been 19 films released based on the property.
