In 2016, after a lot of negotiation from various interested studios, The Pokemon Company decided
to bestow the rights for a live-action cinematic adaptation of the Pokemon world to Legendary
Pictures.
But there was a catch.
While many of the various pitches and treatments for the property focused on the story of Ash
Ketchum or Red from the original Pokemon games, The Pokemon Company wanted something different.
They were only offering up the rights to one relatively obscure spin-off title, Great Detective
Pikachu, a game which had never been released outside of Japan.
The Pokemon Company had a good reason for making this decision, and it ultimately impacted
the choice of creators who worked on the film, as well as the final tone and style of the
first live-action Pokemon movie.
This is the story of Detective Pikachu, and the other Pokemon movie that was never meant
to be.
There were a lot of people vying for the rights to Pokemon in 2016.
Avi Arad at Sony had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get permission to make a Nintendo movie
for many years.
Other studios also wanted in on the action.
Pokemon seemed like the perfect film, especially considering that it had already been the basis
of three theatrically released cartoon movies almost two decades before.
Studios had to compete for the opportunity to make the film, proving that they had what
it took to do Pokemon justice.
One pitch involved a more-or-less faithful adaptation of the story of Red, the protagonist
of the original Pokemon games on the Nintendo Gameboy, albeit with some changes to key human
and Pokemon characters.
In this version of the story, the film would centre around Red and his friendship with
Blue, a tomboyish girl who lived in his rural home town.
The film was described as “an Amblin Pokemon movie”.
It would draw inspiration from Rocky, but also from Harry Potter.
Red’s father spent too much time away from home in the big city.
His mother was a retired Pokemon trainer, and her beloved partner, an aging Graveler,
had once been a champion fighter.
The story would kick off when Red stumbled into the woods and came across his very first
Pokemon: a Koffing.
This film would be “a cute, happy, fun, sweet story” about friendship, family, and
growing up.
This kind of film wasn’t anything like what The Pokemon Company had in mind.
They were only interested in licensing Detective Pikachu.
Faced with the option of either changing his pitch or walking away, the screenwriter who’d
developed the rejected Koffing movie left the project.
As it happens, this turned out to be very good news for The Pokemon Company and Legendary
Pictures alike.
Not long after departing from the picture, the screenwriter in question, Max Landis,
was accused by many different people of very inappropriate behaviour towards women.
Had he still been attached to the Pokemon movie, this could well have had a severe negative
effect on the project.
Thankfully, the team of creatives who ultimately worked on Detective Pikachu were not embroiled
in any similar controversy.
Nicole Perlman, who wrote the first draft of the script for Guardians of the Galaxy,
brought her talents to this project as well.
Perlman outlined the initial story for Detective Pikachu based on the video game that was subsequently
translated and released to the West.
In the director’s chair was Rob Letterman, whose directorial debut had been the 2004
Dreamworks cartoon Shark Tale, and who had most recently directed Goosebumps.
Rob was surprised to hear that The Pokemon Company didn’t want this film to be an Ash
Ketchum movie, but he understood their logic.
According to Rob: “The Pokemon Company, they’ve already
made many, many movies of Ash, and they came to Legendary with this idea of using a new
character.
So when I came onboard, I was pitched this character of Detective Pikachu, and I fell
in love with the story behind it.
It’s a really great story.
It was something with a lot of heart, and it was just very unique.
And because there’s already been so much work done with Ash, for the first live-action
movie I thought it was a really good idea to try something new with a new character,
but bake it into the universe of Pokemon.
So it still follows all the rules, and we get to see a lot of our favorite things.”
Indeed, Rob was actually very intrigued by the idea of making a Pokemon detective film.
As he read through the translated script for the Detective Pikachu game, he couldn’t
help but think of a movie he’d been watching recently, David Fincher’s Seven.
Rob loved the thought of making a gritty, grimy, neon-soaked noir detective story that
used cute, colourful video game characters.
This was a complete departure from anything that the series had seen before, and it lent
itself well to the quirky, colourfully dark filmmaking that Rob had practiced on Goosebumps.
The lynchpin on Rob’s film was a classic noir detective interrogation scene, but with
a very unique twist.
He wanted to use the nightmare fuel Pokemon that is Mr Mime as the witness.
He liked the idea of Mr Mime performing all of his testimony silently, in a bizarre game
of charades that the story’s heroes must decipher.
Rob’s contacts at The Pokemon Company were not impressed.
Not only did this idea seem ridiculous, but they also didn’t like that Rob wanted to
steer into the disturbing design of Mr Mime, making the character look particularly offputting
to further add to the humour of the scene.
Rob tried several times to convince his overseers to change their minds, but to no avail.
He really didn’t want to lose the scene – it was integral to what he was trying
to achieve with the film.
So, Rob went over their heads, and wrote a letter directly to the President of The Pokemon
Company, Tsunekazu Ishihara, explain his idea.
To his delight, President Ishihara thought that the scene was absolutely hilarious, and
immediately gave his blessing for Rob to make a weird, ugly Mr Mime a central part of the
film.
And so, the Detective Pikachu movie was born, a truly unique twist on the Pokemon formula
that was only possible because everyone involved was pushed to make something different.
Perhaps the moral of the story is that sometimes, you’ve got to roll with the punches.
Limitations can be a good thing.
Rob Letterman came up with his unique, neon-soaked noir detective Pokemon film primarily because
he wasn’t allowed to make a more traditional, obvious movie.
But, sometimes you need to stand your ground.
If Rob had given up when his initial attempt at including Mr Mime was rejected, the final
film wouldn’t have been quite as weird and wonderful as he’d envisioned.
As for when to raise and when to fold?
That’s anybody’s guess.
But when you get the balance just right, it’s super effective.