Legendary/Nintendo The studio behind the upcoming Detective Pikachu live action film I never knew I needed have more Pokemon related irons in the fire, according to a new report from We Got This Covered.
The report claims that Legendary are aware of the potential of a Pokemon movie franchise, and are currently developing two new flicks. One is based on the legendary psychic critter Mewtwo, and the other will apparently be an adaptation of the Game Boy originals, Pokemon Red/Blue.
GameFreakThe word is that these films will be set in the same universe as Detective Pikachu, because that’s basically the law in Hollywood now. Despite being set in the same world, however, the narrative of these rumoured movies won’t have any connection to Detective Pikachu.
Fans of Pokemon will no doubt be aware that the original games didn’t really boast a plot that was begging to be made into a movie. A young boy departs his hometown with dreams of becoming a champion trainer, defeating eight gym leaders and occasionally bumping into a villainous group known as Team Rocket along the way.
The classic anime series has proved that the games can be adapted though. But where the original anime would often diverge and take some license with the source material, the excellent Pokemon Origins miniseries actually offered up a pretty damn close interpretation of Red and Blue. I’d be pretty happy with a live action take on that series, frankly.
As for Mewtwo… well, there’s a ton you can do with him. Number 150 has popped up in a couple of animated features previously, and is actually set to star in the latest, snappily titled Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution.
These reports are entirely unverified right now, so do take the above with a pinch of salt. I imagine Legendary will probably wait to see just how well Detective Pikachu does when it opens on May 10 before really committing to anything else.
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.