Detective Pikachu Director Talks Bringing Pokemon to Life

Detective Pikachu director Rob Letterman spoke with IGN about the upcoming film, the first live-action Pokemon movie, and why they decided to go a different route than bringing fan favorite trainer Ash Ketchum to the big screen.

“It’s a really great story. It was something with a lot of heart, and it was just very unique. And because there’s already been so much work done with Ash, for the first live-action movie I thought it was a really good idea to try something new with a new character, but bake it into the universe of Pokémon. So it still follows all the rules, and we get to see a lot of our favorite things.”

Letterman also elaborated on the casting of Ryan Reynolds as the voice of the titular Detective, saying: “It sounds like a mismatch, but it’s really organic. It’s really hilarious, they’re hilarious together.”

Another difficulty for the production was choosing which Pokemon characters to showcase in the film. In total, the Pokémon universe has 802 characters to choose from, and so the team had to pick and choose which ones worked best for the story. Letterman worked directly The Pokémon Company and Game Freak in selecting what were the favorites and what worked best for the film. Regarding how the creatures will look in the film, Letterman said:

“They’re incredibly real, you should think of it as the way (Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy character) Rocket Raccoon sits in the movie as if he’s really there. It’s that technology. The same group of people that worked on that, or worked on Jungle Book. We’ve got the people on it that worked on Fantastic Beasts. They’re technically, some of the most high-end visual effects in the world. It’s completely photorealistic, like they are alive and in the movie.”

The film was originally set for release on May 10, but following the shift from Universal to Warner Bros. it appears the date may have been pushed back. Stay tuned for more details on the movie and its release date as we learn them.

The Detective Pikachu movie’s eclectic cast consists of Golden Globe nominee Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) as the titular talking Pokemon with Justice Smith (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Kathryn Newton (Big Little Lies), Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), Suki Waterhouse (Assassination Nation), Rita Ora (Fifty Shades Freed) and Golden Globe winner Bill Nighy (Gideon’s Daughter). Smith will star as a teen whose father is kidnapped which leads him to Reynolds’ Pikachu and Kathryn Newton as a young journalist who team up in order to find him.