Right, the Resident Evil movies will have grossed over $1b after the 6th one releases. Not bad for what fans of the game say is a shit video game movie adaption.

I don't at all see how this is gonna work, atleast not with the expected get all gym badges and take on the Elite 4 plot. 2 hours just isn't long enough for that. I also can't visualize what the battles will look like, atleast not without them looking cheap and corny.

Oh God, YES!

This might still go horribly wrong, but these writers are superb. They might actually bring back some of the hints of mystery and darkness that the anime had in it's early run. Also, there might be actual meanigful writing.

No... just like the sonic the hedgehog movie, I just don't see how Live Action can possibly work for this franchise. They should have just made a pixar-esque animated movie.

True, but those are practically impossible to do at anything but a massive budget.

It's probably a really liberal take on Pokemon, not an exact copy like it would be if it was a Japanese production.

I doubt there will be gyms and tournaments. Probably about teens in casual clothes who wind up with Pokemon who need to defeat some evil guy, who want to hurt Pokemon or something.

It's detective pikachu, not the mainline games.

Well none of the anime movies (that i've seen) focused on gym badges and elite 4. It's usually just, Ash and crew chilling in some place, villain shows up being mean and causing a catastrophe, they fight to stop the catastrophe and defeat the villain, the end. Gyms, tournaments or leagues aren't needed to make a pokemon movie.

I agree with the battles though, I just can't imagine a live action pokemon movie being anything but cringe-worthy. :/

Source? It would be tremendously silly to base the western-made Pokemon movie off of a non Pokemon-like spinoff that is exclusive to Japan.

Well that's because the TV series does that already while this movie will be standalone, but still yeah I guess they don't have to use that plot. 

Can a live-action movie capture the Pokemon setting? Yes I think so.

Can a live action movie depict Pokemon themselves convincingly? Sure.

Can a live action depict the characters of Pokemon convincingly? This is where it gets to be a huge uh... I think you lose a kind of range of expression that you can only get in anime that you don't get in live action.