Pokémon fever is currently sweeping the planet as gamers wander around the streets glued to their phones. But the phenomenon will soon be taking to theatres too after Legendary Entertainment secured the rights to make a live action movie.
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Legendary Entertainment has confirmed that it has secured the rights from the Pokémon Company to produce Pocket Monsters’ first live-action film, according to a report by Variety. A number of studios began to indicate their interest in acquiring the rights soon after it became apparent that the Pokémon Go app would become a worldwide success.
The film will be based on ‘Detective Pikachu’, a Japanese adventure video game that is a spin-off of the main franchise. In this game, Pikachu talks and works with players to solve mysteries. Production is currently scheduled to begin in 2017.
Since the augmented reality game’s initial launch on July 6, Nintendo’s stock value has more than doubled to $42 billion with over 30 million users around the world. On average, there are more daily active users on the Pokémon Go app on Android devices than social media apps like Tinder, Snapchat, Instagram, and even Facebook.
Los Angeles-based Legendary Entertainment was recently acquired by Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group for $3.5 billion. It was responsible for some of the past decade’s biggest films, such as Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Godzilla, Jurassic World, and Warcraft.
It has taken almost 20 years for a major Hollywood studio to develop a live action Pokémon film, but that hasn’t stopped fans from imagining what the finished product might look like.
In 2010, a Vancouver-made production created a trailer for Pokémon Apokélypse, envisioning a scenario of Pokémon fighting going underground after it becomes illegal. Over the last six years, the video on YouTube has clocked more than 12 million views:
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