BREAKING: Legendary Entertainment and The Pokémon Company have confirmed they’ve reached a deal to launch the first live-action film franchise based on the Japanese pocket monster game. Deadline revealed on July 12 that a deal was in the offing, after numerous studios chased the rights following the launch of the wildly popular Pokemon Go app. The feature franchise will be built around Detective Pikachu, a character in the Pokemon universe that was introduced through a video game in Japan. The plan is to begin production next year, with Universal distributing in territories outside Japan, through its overall deal with Legendary.

Rumors of a possible Pokemon movie deal have circled for months, and the screenwriter Max Landis has been mentioned as a possible participant. The companies didn’t go further than confirming the movie deal is completed. It is the latest of several high profile movie deals for Legendary, Thomas Tull’s company that was acquired by Wanda and is being steered by Mary Parent. The company yesterday acquired an untitled project for The Birth of A Nation writer/director/producer Nate Parker, who’ll serve those roles on the project, and the company recently won an auction for Bad Blood, the pitch that Adam McKay will write and direct in the vein of The Big Short, based on the saga of Silicon Valley blood testing company Theranos, with Jennifer Lawrence starring and producing with McKay and his Gary Sanchez cohorts.

http://deadline.com/2016/07/pokemon-movie-live-action-detective-pikachu-legendary-1201789645/

Detective Pikachu?? Why?!?!?
That is so disappointing.

I love it! Lets get Danny DeVito on board! Billions ensue.

It's being re-imagined as film noir.  

Day. One.

And with this:
Phase One of the Nintendo Cinematic Universe begins! XD

I actually think it's a better solution than trying to do a traditional Pokemon movie because I can easily see any western production company screwing up a traditional Pokemon movie since they probably wouldn't try to stay true to the source material.  At least with using the Detective Pikachu formula, there's more of a chance that they can produce something decent since that spin-off falls into a level of storytelling that's more familiar and comfortable to western filmmakers and the average movie-goer that's not a hardcore Pokemon fan.  If they had to just had to try and make a live action version of a typical Pokemon anime or mainline game, I could easily see it trending into Avatar and Dragonball Z live-action levels of cringe.

Yeah, this is basically sort of a safety net of sorts as well. Because if this tanks, it at least has the excuse of being based on a spin-off and it won't be anywhere near as bad as it would have if this were a full-throttle Pokemon movie based off the mainline games.

Also, I think a big part as to why movies like The Last Airbender and Dragonball: Evolution bombed so hard like they did were because it was all Hollywood's take on those franchises. Because as far as I know, the creators and team behind Avatar and Dragon Ball had no input direction, or hand in creating those films. Hell, Akira Toriyama said in an interview that Hollywood didn't listen to him and his ideas when created Evolution and... we all know how that ended.

It sounds more intuitive than adapting a 30 hour RPG into a 2 hour action film.

What a time to be alive.

This. Hopefully he knows what Pokemon is by now