Detective Pikachu Movie Will Start Filming In London In January

Will Danny Devito do pikachu's voice? If so, I'm in.

Vin Dievesel as Ash, Morgan Freeman as Brock , Rosie O' Donnell as Misty, Nicolas Cage as Gary and Jack Nicholson as Professor Oak.

https://youtu.be/1cR4ADXBkII

Weird for such a movie to be made when the game hasn't even been localised yet. Although maybe their saving it for when the movie drops. I'm not 100% sure on this one, especially since the video game movie genre has never had a great movie before. But it has the same writer who made Gravity Falls and the co-writer of Guardians of the Galaxy so that seems good. However Rob Letterman is directing and I find him rather hit or miss with his Dreamworks catalogue, though to be fair sometimes he wasn't given the best script to work with. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Huh, and to think this is technically the very first Live action Pokemon movie.

That's nice and all but I'd rather just have the game translated and released outside of Japan!

Pikachu is talking ?!

@roy130390
And Dwayne Johnson as Ash's mom, and of course, Kevin Spacey as Giovanni.

Yikes, what a resume. So basically the guy who directed all of the worst dreamworks movies. Hopes are not high.

Danny Devito literally did not know what Pokemon was when a fan asked him about the role (he no doubt knows now because of Pokemon Go). I think a likely voice actor could be Alex Hirsch doing a Grunkle Stan-esque deep voice since he's already working on the movie.

Yikes. The movies they credit the director with don't exactly inspire confidence.

Imagine if the movie drops on 2019 or 20. The 3ds could see a brand new game that year with Detective Pikachu.

Just hope Universal and Legendary don't mess this up badly

I still find it so bizarre that the first actual movie they decide to make for Pokemon is based off of Detective Pikachu, which we never got in the Americas or Europe.
Hopefully things run smoothly though so that we can get this movie sometime in 2019 and potentially even get a teaser in late 2018.

We already know that Rob Letterman, the man behind projects such as Goosebumps, Shark Tale, and Monsters Vs. Aliens is expected to direct the film, but no news has arrived yet of casting details.
Looking at all the films he directed so far, a good few of them feature Jack Black. Maybe he'll be the voice for Detective Pikachu...?

@FTPinkRabbit Kids seem to like those movies, and I doubt any new PokéMon movie's target audience will be older fans of the franchise, aside from Origins, of course. But I do hope, if nothing else, that this will be better than Shark Tale.

Shark tale was awful, but his two later movies: Monsters vs Aliens and Goosebumps were actually pretty fun.

If the game ever gets released here it will most likely be in the form of a port on Switch. I don't see it coming to 3DS in the West at this point.

The thing is, I've never been a fan of the mainline Pokemon games, but love the spin-offs and the universe. I just want a detective Pikachu translation for America.

As long as Hollywood has any involvement in this, then it'll be a steaming POS.

I don't understand why people go out to see whitewashed versions of beloved Japanese franchises while ignoring the source material.

I'm alright with Legendary.
Rob Letterman on the other hand? Not so much.

I'll still keep an eye out for this. Conceptually I actually much prefer this over the core game adaptions everyone else wants.

@sillygostly Having played the game in its entirety, I would argue against the notion that something intrinsically Japanese here is being Westernised (or 'whitewashed') in order to appeal to an English speaking audience. For the simple reason that the game is so deliberately Western-themed to begin with.

The game follows a very obvious Sherlock Holmes analogue through the streets of a very obvious New York analogue, along the way making friends (and enemies) with an ethnically and culturally varied cast whose names are often so Western as to be almost comical. Characters include Tim Goodman (protagonist), Pablo Milan (runs a coffee shop complete with a Ludico dancing around shaking maracas), Amanda Blackstone (secretary at the Detective Agency),
and Carlos Hernando (presumably an amalgamation of Fernando and Hernandez) . For a thorough list, see here.

And if anyone manages to 'whitewash' Mike Baker and Frederick Hartfield...

...I'll be highly impressed.

If you're going to make claims of "source material being whitewashed", then it would be helpful to have a knowledge of the source material to begin with.

I'm not saying there aren't conditions under which this discussion is valid, but we're hardly talking about Edo-era Nō drama here. What we're talking about is Tim Goodman strolling around Rhyme City with Sherlock Holmes recast as an electric mouse.

Filming what is essentially a homage to Sherlock Holmes in London is hardly a shocking development.

This will be interesting. I wonder if it will have a full theater release, or if it will be in select theaters like usual.

@PlanetaryNebulae It's a wide release. I don't really care about the film since I haven't been able to play Detective Pikachu for 3DS. Make it the 3DS' swansong Nintendo!

Mixed CGI and live action, AND a lame detective gimmick? Sounds like a flop... That will probably make a lot of money regardless.

@Kayfios That wasn't really my point. Kids generally like what's advertised to them, but that doesn't mean all of their entertainment is created equally. Shark Tale and Monsters Vs. Aliens were both movies I saw as a kid. As a kid, they were fine. As an adult, I don't look back on them with the same fondness I have for say, Shrek, Finding Nemo, etc.

I'm just saying that this guy's track record indicates this is going to be a bland, forgettable miscarriage of a movie and I hope I'm wrong about that because frankly I find the idea of it hilarious.