Warner Bros. takes over the distribution of Legendary Entertainment’s Detective Pikachu outside Japan. It is first of a planned live-action movie which is franchised on the Japanese video game, Pokémon. Once Legendary Entertainment’s current deal with Universal Pictures expires on 31 December, it will sign a new deal with Warner Bros.
Detective Pikachu was released in 2016 which is a spinoff of the famous Pokémon series featured a talking Pikachu who went about solving mysteries with assistance from a human boy named Tim Goodman. In 2016 during the development of the movie, several studios had bid for live-action Pokémon film rights, but ultimately Legendary Entertainment won the bidding and took over Detective Pikachu with their usual distribution partner Universal. Ryan Reynolds is lending his voice to the CGI detective Pikachu. The screenplay is being written by Letterman and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy). Directed by Rob Letterman, the movie is expected to hit the theatre on 10 May 2019. Letterman has worked as director of Monsters vs. Aliens and Shark Tale and executive producer on DreamWorks Animation’s Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie.
The partnership between Legendary and Universal likely saw one last hit Skyscraper starring Dwayne Johnson which released this summer.