Warner BrosThere’s a ton of excitement surrounding the upcoming release of Detective Pikachu from Pokefans new and old, so wouldn’t it be a shame if someone – say, the star of the movie – decided to leak the entire film online?
Enter Ryan bloody Reynolds. You’ll know him as the voice of Detective Pikachu himself, the disfigured face of Deadpool, or even that guy from that one episode of Scrubs. But now? He’ll forever be remembered as a world class troll.
Um…. Attn @DetPikachuMovie @warnerbros https://t.co/UF7qYtKOYV
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) May 7, 2019
In a prank of global proportions (and one that likely had a number of Warner Bros execs who weren’t in on the joke in a state of blind panic), the Deadpool actor retweeted a Twitter account claiming to have a YouTube link for the entirety of Detective Pikachu.
Now, movie leaks are obviously a terrible thing, as they ruin the months – sometimes years – of hard work that people put into a project they care about. Sadly, that’s never going stop to certain fans from rushing straight to any leak they see, especially if it’s been pointed out by the lead actor of the film in question.
Thankfully, what Reynolds retweeted was not Detective Pikachu at all, but roughly one hour and 42 minutes of the iconic yellow mouse having a good old boogie to some 80’s synth pop.I urge you to check out some of it below. Maybe don’t sit through the entire thing though. Or do. I’m not your mum.
As I’m sure you’ve worked out by this point, the original Twitter account that “leaked” the “movie” was actually created entirely for the purposes of this prank/genius marketing move. Then again, I haven’t actually seen the real movie yet, so it could very well just be nearly two hours of Pikachu dancing, as above. I kind of hope it is now, to be honest.
I have to give props to whoever on the marketing team actually sat and made the above video too, because the first two minutes will absolute convince you you’re about to watch Detective Pikachu before everything takes a funky dance turn.
Oh, and I know I’ve said this in pretty much every article I’ve written about the movie, but how adorable is that Pikachu? The amount of work that’s gone into the designs and rendering of every Pokemon in this film is absolutely incredible, and worlds away from that ugly-ass live-action Sonic.
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu is the first ever live-action Pokemon movie. It’s in UK cinemas on May 10, and by all accounts is actually pretty good (according to the majority of critics who’ve managed to get to an early screening, anyway).
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via [email protected]
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.