Skip to content
A director and writer have boarded the mysterious sequel
2019 Pokemon: Detective Pikachu was a global hit big enough to warrant a sequel for Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Entertainment, and The Pokémon Company, and yet fans of the pocket monsters entered 2023 with little if any update on what’s next for the upcoming live-action franchise could be coming. But now we finally have a lead: Deadline is reporting that Legendary is in negotiations with a new creative team to take on the theory Pokemon: Detective Pikachu 2.
According to the message, Jonathan Crisisl, co-creator of the IFC sketch comedy series Portlandia and the FX series basketswill likely take on original director Rob Letterman, while Chris Galletta (The Kings of Summer) now has script duties. It’s unclear if Ryan Reynolds would return to voice Pikachu – the end of Detective Pikachu certainly raises questions about how exactly that would be possible — but Deadline suggests that Dead Pool Actor would play a role based on directing the film.
Earlier this year, in our search for answers on the status of the dormant sequel, Legendary told Polygon that the film is still in active development — just like it was in 2019. Even before that Detective Pikachu premiered, Legendary dedicated writer Oren Uziel who wrote the screenplay 22 jump road and a draft by Sonic the Hedgehogto work on a sequel to the film. Uziel officials told Polygon that while he wrote an outline and script for the film, he is no longer involved with the film. Crisis and Galletta could work on Uziel’s draft or start over, but right now there’s no timeframe for the actual film, which doesn’t have a release date at this point.
Tidying Up the Works is an imploded relationship between Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros.; since the release of Detective PikachuLegendary has left the film studio as its main distributor and entered a new deal with Sony Pictures. Detective Pikachu is expected to stay with WB. Meanwhile, Netflix remains a player in the Pokémon content game, with an all-new stop-motion Pokémon anime set for 2023 and a live-action series reportedly in development.
The big question: what comes first, the new Detective Pikachu Movie or the sequel to the game that Nintendo announced in 2019 that also didn’t materialize?
Continue reading