It seems that the Hollywood live-action film Pokémon Detective Pikachu has met box office expectations and ranked #4 in the US. Now on its third weekend of screening, it earned a total of US$13.3 million in last weekend alone in the United States and earned a total of US$24.3 million internationally. The film has now earned an overall total of US$352.9 million worldwide! The numbers will continue to grow as the movie approaches its fourth week.
This is so far the highest U.S. opening weekend for a film adaptation based on a popular video game franchise. Pokemon Detective Pikachu’s opening weekend earned a gross of US$54 million beating the opening weekend box office gross of the 2001 film Lara Croft Tomb Raider at US$47.7 million.
The film was ranked #3 in Japan when it premiered in Japan and earned 1,965,934,600 yen (US$13 million) as of May 19. It was just below two hit films in the ranks during the same month namely Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire and Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame.
Detective Pikachu is based from the Nintendo 3DS game of the same name that was released in 2016 in Japan and in the US, Europe, Australia on March 2018. It stars 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).
It was also confirmed last January that Legendary Films is now working on a sequel of Detective Pikachu. The upcoming sequel to this hit Hollywood film will be written by 22 Jump Street scriptwriter Oren Uziel.
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.
While we wait for its sequel, it’s great to know that the first movie for this possible “Pokemon Cinematic Universe” is a big hit in the box office. Be sure to watch the film in a theater near you!
Source: Box Office Mojo, Deadline, ANN
