Detective Pikachu, the Pokemon game in which a kindly and intelligent character teams up with a boy called Tim Goodman to solve mysteries, is to be the first instalment in a forthcoming Pokemon movie franchise, with production starting in 2017.
Only released earlier this year, the game has proved one of the most popular in Nintendo’s Pokemon slate. Soon after its release, 40,000 signatures were gathered on a petition lobbying for Danny DeVito to voice the English language version, but the actor reportedly declined to audition.
When augmented-reality game Pokemon Go was released, it proved so successful that Nintendo witnessed a 25 per cent rise in the value of its stock.
Last week, when the Legendary deal was first mooted, it was also rumoured that Victor Frankenstein writer Max Landis would be on screenplay duties. Legendary Pictures has been behind blockbusters such as Inception, Jurassic World and Interstellar, and earlier this year it was bought by the Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group for $3.5 billion (Dh12.8 billion).
The Pokemon franchise has had mixed success at the box office. Pokemon: The First Movie took $163 million worldwide in 1999, but the most recent film, Pokemon Heroes, brought in just $28 million four years later.