There's just a few weeks left until Pokemon fans of all ages will be able to feast their eyes on the first live-action story set within the massive world of those adorable pocket monsters, and it sounds like those behind Detective Pikachu are already considering their options when it comes to bringing even more of the legendary critters to the big screen for some live-action fun and adventure. Producer Ali Mendes has now gone on record to talk about just how likely it is that Detective Pikachu will start a cinematic Pokemon universe.
[Pokemon is] such a rich universe. There are so many ways you can go inside of it. We’re trying to get the first movie right, and then once we’ve done that, we’ll see where we go from there, but absolutely. There are a lot of opportunities.
Well, to make no bones about it, folks, it sounds a lot like if Detective Pikachu makes any waves at all once it's released that we could be looking at the beginning of a beautiful, live-action cinematic friendship filled with Pikachus, Charizards, Flareons and a whole host of other critters. And, who can blame the masterminds behind Detective Pikachu for wanting to get their own big screen, live-action cinematic universe going? The possibilities for fan service and financial gain are, seemingly, endless, and the idea of having such a legacy to add to the one that's already been established with the wealth of characters at their disposal has to be very appealing.
Of course, Detective Pikachu will hardly be the first film that's eager to establish a cinematic universe for the world it's bringing to the big screen. As we've seen many, many times since the Marvel Cinematic Universe began dominating in theaters all over the world a little over 10 years ago, trying to create an interconnected universe with characters who all populate the same world, and could easily crossover, has become a major goal for different properties. We now have the Conjuring universe filled with horror stories, the DCEU tackling the stories found in DC comics (and now less interconnected because of the mixed reactions to many of its efforts) and the MonsterVerse giving us shared tales of King Kong, Godzilla and the like.
We've already had one noticeable failed attempt at a cinematic universe, though, with the Dark Universe falling flat upon release of 2017's The Mummy, which was supposed to ignite a shared universe that featured retellings of monster stories from the glory days of Universal. So, is this an uphill battle for Detective Pikachu and the hopefuls who helped bring it to the big screen? It's hard to tell right now, but the Ryan Reynolds-voiced lead character is certainly not the only one who could make the leap to live-action, as Ali Mendes told IGN that she's pretty confident in the stable of characters that make up the Pokemon world.
Even the Pokemon themselves, there are eight hundred of them. We’re going to have a lot of them in [Pokemon: Detective Pikachu], but we want to play with all of them at some point.
Um...there are 800 freakin' Pokemon? I'd say this gives them access to enough critters to create a wide breadth of movies that involve monsters we won't come close to seeing in Detective Pikachu. If all goes well with this film, they could have the beginnings of something major on their hands, and that's really saying something when you consider that there have already been a whopping 22 animated Pokemon movies and 22 seasons of TV across six different shows. Not to mention that a new crop of Pokemon will debut when the latest video game, Pokemon Sword and Shield releases later this year.
If you want to see this cinematic universe dream come to fruition, your best bet is to go see Detective Pikachu when it hits theaters on May 10.
