After years of speculating on the future of the franchise, it looks like Detective Pikachu isn’t dead—though the latest update is not what fans were expecting.
According to a report from Deadline, The Pokémon Company and its partners at Legendary Entertainment are in talks with Portlandia co-creator and Tim and Eric writer Jonathan Krisel about bringing him on to direct the long-awaited sequel for Pokémon’s live-action debut film.
Along with Krisel entering negotiations for this project, The Kings of Summer writer Chris Galletta is set to write the script too.
Related: All Pokémon Day 2023 announcements
This is some of the first news there’s been about a potential Detective Pikachu sequel film since Justice Smith, the star of the original alongside Ryan Reynolds’ Pikachu, said he would “love to participate” in another project within the franchise back in March 2021. However, he also noted that he didn’t think it would end up happening despite hoping for it.
Detective Pikachu was released in theaters in May 2019 and grossed more than $433 million worldwide, marking it as a successful venture into new territory for the Pokémon franchise. However, the movie isn’t what most Pokémon fans were expecting to hear about this week.
In the lead-up to Pokémon Day 2023 on Feb. 27, a portion of the Pokémon community hyped up the possibility that Detective Pikachu 2, a sequel to the Nintendo 3DS game that the movie used as a base, would finally be shown seven years after the original’s Japanese release.
While Detective Pikachu launched in Japan back in February 2016, it wouldn’t come to western markets until March 2018—a bit over a year before the movie would release. And, not long after the film’s May 2019 debut, TPC also announced a follow-up title to continue the story of Detective Pikachu was in development for the Switch.
That is the last time fans heard about the game in any official capacity and it did not appear at any point during the Pokémon Day festivities. Despite this, there have been several instances of the second game’s existence that have popped up over the last year or so thanks to job listings and game developer project bios that talk about the game being “in development” or even “nearing release.”
Related: Three years later, Pokémon fans are still solving the mystery of Detective Pikachu’s sequel
Because there is now more news pointing to another Detective Pikachu film entering early development, there are a few things to note depending on how TPC and Legendary plan to go about production.
If this is actually a sequel film to the original, the sequel for the game could be held in TPC’s back pocket until a later date closer to the film’s actual release—meaning several years down the line at this point, based on how long films take to make after a director is onboarded. This could also lead to the rumored Switch port of the original game making an appearance to bridge the gap.
There is also a very real chance that this follow-up will not be held to the same development of the original and it will not share parallels with a Detective Pikachu game, or at the very least will not be tied to the core story plot points as heavily as the first attempt.
This might not be the news Pokémon fans were expecting, and it doesn’t take away the sting of not getting many announcements during the Pokémon Day Pokémon Presents, but at least it shows that something is happening with Detective Pikachu. That should alleviate worries for anyone that still wasn’t sure the franchise would continue.
