By It only took a couple of weeks after mobile game Pokemon Go took the world by storm for a studio to get in on the action an announce a live-action Pokemon movie. Now, we’ve got a writing team, which is sure to put some fans at ease.
Variety reports that Nicole Perlman and Alex Hirsch will pen the script for the pocket monsters’ first foray into live action (not counting your phone screen). Perlman is perhaps best known as one of the writers of 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, although she also had uncredited input on 2011’s Thor and is working on 2019’s Captain Marvel, led by Brie Larson, to round out the Marvel trifecta. Hirsch’s big claim to fame is Gravity Falls, an animated series that ran on Disney Channel, which started in 2012 and wrapped earlier this year. The movie will be developed by Legendary and distributed by Universal globally, though Toho will distribute in Japan.
The movie will reportedly be based on the digital 3DS game Great Detective Pikachu, a decidedly off-kilter spinoff of the main franchise that features the series mascot teaming up with a human boy to solve mysteries. The game was released in Japan in February, but no release in North America or other territories has been announced. Meanwhile, although Pokemon Go is getting all the love right now, the latest entries in the main role-playing series – Pokemon Sun and Moon – will launch globally for the 3DS in November.
In a series that’s had lots of spinoffs, a game about Pikachu playing Sherlock Holmes is an interesting choice. Regardless, the announcement should put some fears at ease. It surely made some fans nervous to hear that Pokemon would make the leap to live action, but on a script-level, this is pretty much a slam dunk. Perlman’s work on Guardians pretty much speaks for itself, and Hirsch’s Gravity Falls is a really great little gem that got overshadowed by the likes of Adventure Time and Steven Universe.
So yeah, it looks like this is actually happening, for better or worse. Too bad we couldn’t get Danny DeVito, though.