While Detective Pikachu is only slated to premiere in May, a report from entertainment news website The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Legendary Pictures is now working on a sequel to the movie. According to the report that was posted last week, 22 Jump Street writer Oren Uziel is confirmed to be writing the script.
The first film is scheduled to premiere in the United States on May 10 and in Japan in the same month. Warner Bros and TOHO will be distributing the film for North America and Japan respectively. Detective Pikachu is based on the Nintendo 3DS game of the same name released in 2016 and in March 2018 for Europe, US, and Australia.
The film will star Ryan Reynolds voicing Pikachu, Justice Smith (The Get Down) as Tim Goodman, Kathryn Newton (Big Little Lies) as Lucy, and Ken Watanabe (Godzilla, Legendary Pictures) as the film-original character Detective Yoshida. Other cast members include Chris Geere (You’re the Worst), Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest), Omar Chaparro (Stuck), and Rita Ora (Fifty Shades Freed).
In July 2016, Legendary Entertainment acquired the live-action film rights for the Pokémon franchise. Recently, the website We Got This Covered reported that the company was working on another live-action Pokémon movie project which is set in the same universe as Detective Pikachu but the story will be based on the popular Pokémon Gameboy Color games Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue.
According to the website’s “trusted sources”, the said movie sequel will focus on the introduction of the franchise, much like how players were introduced to the lore of Pokémon by the Gameboy games.
At the time of writing, it’s not certain if the confirmed sequel will be based on Red and Blue, or if it’ll specifically be a Detective Pikachu sequel. Maybe we’ll get three movies. Here’s hoping that at least one of them features the first generation legendary Pokémon like Mew and Mewtwo. With the movie premiere of Detective Pikachu just a few months away, we’ll just have to see if Pokémon takes the entertainment industry by storm.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
