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The Pokémon franchise has a lot of movies and animated series, both of which remain major events in Japan and also enjoy a sizeable audience in the West through TV and streaming services. Yet that content has a lot of backstory and lore involved, and it's fair to say that among the tens of millions of gamers that have played Pokémon games, a number won't have watched any of the animated series shows or films.

It's no surprise, then, to see chatter around the rights to Pokémon movies that'd get live-action treatment; after all, a lot of the 20th Anniversary promotions by The Pokémon Company played on that very idea. There's also the Pokémon GO factor, which has taken off to an extraordinary degree and made the brand mainstream news once again.

As a result of this, Deadline is reporting that its sources believe that movie behemoth Legendary Pictures is "moving toward a deal" for rights to the series. Talk of this potential deal has been going around for some months, with the Pokémon brand's power driving interest. Even before GO went massive the broader IP was stealing headlines for its NFL Super Bowl advert, among other things. This year also brings Pokémon Sun and Moon, so it continues to generate a huge amount of interest.

Legendary Pictures was behind the recent cinematic debut of Warcraft, so it's evidently keen on bringing gaming franchises to the movies. Deadspin reckons a prospective deal could also be influenced by the recent explosion of GO, stating that it'll "likely test the bounds of the biggest video-game movie rights deal, which is around $5 million against 5% of first-dollar gross".

Pokémon is hot right now, though any live action movie would surely be at least 2-3 years away by the time deals are done. Whatever the case, few would doubt the commercial potential of mainstream live-action Pokémon movies.

[source deadline.com, via eurogamer.net]