Live Action Pokemon Film ‘Detective Pikachu’ Gets Rob Letterman As Director

It looks like Legendary Entertainment’s live-action Pokemon film finally has a director attached. Rob Letterman, who has thus far brought us such films as Monsters vs. Aliens, Gulliver’s Travels, and Goosebumps. The script has been penned by Alex Hirsch and Guardians of the Galaxy’s Nichole Perlman (who is also still currently writing the next installment in the modern Sherlock Holmes films).

Universal Pictures will release the live-action film outside Japan, while Toho will handle the Japanese distribution, which parallels the companies’ partnership with Legendary on the latest Godzilla reboot.

Legendary’s deal to make the film been reported by Variety earlier this year, just two weeks after the launch of the wildly successful Pokemon Go! mobile game. Other than the director and writers attached, not much is yet known about the production or storyline beyond the shooting is slated to start in 2017. Detective Pikachu is a new character story in the Pokemon universe, introduced via a Japanese video game tie-in (the trailer for it, in Japanese, is below).