News
Live-Action Pokemon: Detective Pikachu Film's Director Explains Choice of Main Character
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
In an interview with media website IGN, director Rob Letterman explained during the 2018 Pokémon World Championships on Friday why the production of the upcoming Pokémon Detective Pikachu film chose to focus on the titular character. He explained that it was The Pokémon Company who approached Legendary Entertainment with the idea of a new main character instead of Ash, the main character of the Pokémon anime. Letterman proposed the Detective Pikachu character as the film's main character.
Letterman said that he "fell in love with the story behind" Detective Pikachu, and described it as "something with a lot of heart." He noted that since many of the previous Pokémon works already focused on Ash, he thought it would be a good idea to focus the live-action film on a new character. Letterman added that the film "still follows all the rules, and we get to see a lot of our favorite things."
The film is slated to debut in the United States on May 10, 2019.
Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) will play Detective Pikachu. Justice Smith (The Get Down) will star as another main character, a teen who teams with Pikachu in order to find his missing father, and Newton (Big Little Lies) will play the "sassy journalist" Lucy. Ken Watanabe (Legendary's Godzilla) will play original character Detective Yoshida. Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Love Actually), Chris Geere (You're the Worst), Suki Waterhouse (Assassination Nation), Rita Ora (Fifty Shades Freed), and Omar Chaparro (Stuck, Overboard 2018) are also part of the cast.
Letterman (Shark Tale, Monsters vs. Aliens, Goosebumps) is directing the film, with scripts by Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls) and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy).
The film is based on the Detective Pikachu Nintendo 3DS game, which debuted in Japan in 2016. An extended version shipped in the West on March 23.
Source: IGN (Joshua Yehl)
