Legendary is moving full-speed ahead on itslive-actionPokemonmovieto take advantage of thePokemon Gocraze, and now the film has one crucial ingredient: screenwriters. PerVariety,Nicole PerlmanandAlex Hirschare in negotiations to pen the script for the live-actionPokemonmovie based on the gameDetective Pikachu. Legendary landed the rights to the property mere weeks afterPokemon Gowas launched, fortuitously securing one of the most coveted deals in Hollywood. Indeed, it’s straight-up 1999 out there right now as folks across the globe are immersed into the hunting and catching of Pokemon via thePokemon Gomobile game.
Perlman is a veteran of Marvel’s writers program, which began shortly after the success ofIron Manand served to develop early scripts for a number of properties, includingGuardians of the Galaxy. She served as the script originator on that film beforeJames Gunncame on to co-write and direct, and she’s co-writing Marvel’s upcoming female-led superhero picCaptain MarvelwithInside Outco-writerMeg LeFauve. That film recently secured a star in Oscar-winning actressBrie Larson.
Hirsch, meanwhile, is best known for creating the popular Disney XD animated seriesGravity Falls, which makes this a rather promising pairing.
We still don’t know what this live-actionPokemonmovie will entail other than the inclusion of Detective Pikachu, a character who’s only been unveiled in Japan thus far. In the video game, he’s a young Pikachu who is not as powerful as his fellow Pikachu, but boasts of being a great detective nonetheless. He subsequently teams up with a young human boy who can understand him, and the two set about solving mysteries. So it’s a bit likeThe Adventures of Tintin, except 1000 times more nerdy.
Universal will distribute the film via their deal with Legendary, and one imagines the studio is going to be working quickly to get this thing in theaters as fast as possible lest they risk coming out after Pokemon’s resurgent popularity subsides.
While Perlman and Hirsch are handling script duties, one screenwriter who pitched his own take on the franchise wasMax Landis. At Comic-Con in July, he revealed his take on the story which he described asHarry PotterandRocky-esque, which you can watch below.
