Well, you had to see this coming.
As Pokemon Go fever gripped the nation, the eyes of film executives likely filled with dollar signs. And lo, we have our first announced deal, as Legendary Entertainment landed the rights. Legendary, which is a subsidiary of massive Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group, has helped to finance and produce films including Jurassic World, Interstellar, Straight Outta Compton, and many more.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, they weren’t the only studio interested:
Back in April, before the augmented reality game had become an obsession, The Hollywood Reporter exclusively revealed that Thomas Tull’s Legendary Entertainment, which since January is a division of China’s Dalian Wanda Group, was nearing a deal for the Pokemon property in a top-secret auction.
After Pokemon Go, an app game that allows users to travel around collecting Pokemon, became a phenomenon quickly after its July 6 launch, Legendary set about closing the deal with The Pokemon Co., the Japanese outfit that manages the rights to the franchise spun from the hit Nintendo game. Sources say Netflix was very hot on the property.
From that same report, the franchise will apparently be centered around Detective Pikachu. Whatever that means.
The Pokemon films that have come before have all been, let’s say, less than impressive. (My parents essentially took turns walking out on the first one when my siblings and I demanded to see it in theaters.) It remains to be seen whether there can be any sort of coherent or interesting movie plot mined from this particular universe. But what cannot be debated is the demand for the product; if you doubt that, walk outside right now and within five minutes you’ll likely see somebody hunting down a Pidgey.
The downside, of course, is that there’s a decent chance this entire craze could die off before they can take advantage of it. The first movie is apparently getting fast-tracked, but it still won’t start production until 2017.
Will our society still be in the throes of Pokemon madness by then? Will this franchise be a hit, or a massive flop? I don’t know. I just hope they get Benedict Cumberbatch to play Detective Pikachu.
