Has Pokémon Go Restarted Development On The Live-Action Movie?
Legendary are closing in on the property's rights.
It's either an immersive experience that fulfils your geekiest fantasy or has turned the entire world into screen-obsessed zombies; Pokémon Go, Nintendo/Niantic's augmented reality mobile game is a gym-stormer, dominating popular culture and already achieving active user numbers that rival Twitter.
So it's hardly surprising that, less than a week since the app exploded, talk of Legendary pursuing a live-action Pokémon film has exploded again. We reported on the story back in April, but then Pokemon was just another millennial nostalgia property where a cinematic epic would be met with derision; now I would wager that most of the target audience (people who grew up with Red/Blue) will be pretty on board.
In terms of branding, this is something more explosive than what Disney's achieved with Star Wars. Most people didn't realise they even missed Pokémon, but here we are.
Whether the success of Go will impact the film itself is unclear. The obvious route would be to set it in the world of the games, but there's now scope to have it cross into our reality (although that approach has been iffy for video games before), which could offer amazing app tie-ins. Whatever happens, my big hope is that we get celebrities voicing the monolexical Pokémon - that'd just be hilarious.