Hollywood Reportedly Racing To Make Live-Action Pokemon Movie

In light of Pokemon GO’s insane success, new reports suggest that Hollywood are now scrambling for the rights to turn the franchise into a live action film. 

Deadline reports that – as you might expect – attempts to make a Pokemon feature film have been going on for a while now, but studios have been kicked into action by the impact of the new AR mobile game.

It’s not too surprising – Nintendo enjoyed a $9 billion 25% stock price jump after the app’s launch – who wouldn’t want a piece of that pie?

Legendary Pictures (who recently released the Warcraft movie) is apparently ‘moving toward a deal’. Rumblings suggest that Chronicle scribe Max Landis would write the screenplay, but that’s essentially all we have at the moment.

As for the ‘live action’ aspect, I would hope whichever studio gets the rights knows enough to make sure that the Pokemon themselves are at least CG creations – I’m not sure how much I want to see Nicholas Cage crawling around on the floor in a skintight yellow suit pretending to be Pikachu.

Although to be fair, now I’ve imagined it, that’s all I want from a potential Pokemon movie.

Nintendo has always been famously guarded with their properties when it comes to the big screen. Probably because the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie was tantamount to having lukewarm shit rubbed in our eyes.

Still, a Pokemon movie would doubtless bring in some serious cash. Regardless of whether or not Pokemon GO is still relevant when/if the film comes out (it probably won’t be), it’s still a mega franchise.

Here’s an idea: Whoever gets the rights to Pokemon should take heavy, heavy inspiration from the 1998 animated film. I guarantee the audience would gobble that up.