Legendary and Warner Bros have already greenlit the sequel to Detective Pikachu about three months before the film’s release, according to The Hollywood Reporter. 22 Jump Street writer Oren Uziel has been recruited to pen the script. Detective Pikachu is based on the 2016 Nintendo 3DS video-game of the same name.
Detective Pikachu is the first live-action film in the Pokémon franchise. It is live-action in the same way Disney’s upcoming The Lion King is live-action, in the sense that the human characters are real, but all the Pokémon are (obviously) animated.
Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds voices a very talkative Pikachu who comes across a former Pokémon trainer, Tim Goodman. Goodman can somehow understand the language of the Pokémon, while to others he sounds like any other Pikachu. Japanese voice-actress Ikue Ōtani has provided the usual Pikachu sounds.
Goodman’s father was a prominent detective Harry Goodman who disappeared in a car crash. Pikachu, who is called Detective Pikachu, was a Pokémon of Harry. Tim reluctantly teams up with the Pokémon to solve the mystery and to find his father.
The trailer for the film received a lot of attention on YouTube. It clocked 55 million views. The choice of Reynolds as Pikachu was lauded. Reynolds’ Deadpool is similarly motormouth, though unlike the superhero film series, Detective Pikachu will likely aim for a PG rating.
The confidence placed in the film suggests that executives liked an early cut of the film and want to turn it into a franchise. Detective Pikachu will have to face the Avengers: Endgame onslaught in theatres. Endgame releases a mere two weeks before Detective Pikachu. If Detective Pikachu is successful among critics, it would be the first video-game based movie to do so.
Detective Pikachu releases on May 10, 2019.
