Reason Pokemon’s First Live Action Film Features Detective Pikachu Over Ash

At this weekend’s 2018 Pokemon World Championships in Nashville, TN, Detective Pikachu director Rob Letterman (via IGN), explained why the first live action Pokemon film features Detective Pikachu instead of Ash…

On Why Pokemon’s First Live Action Film Features Detective Pikachu Over Ash: “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.”

On Ryan Reynolds Voicing Detective Pikachu: “He’s hilarious, and he just brought so much to the character. There was something delightful about that big personality and voice that he has in this small package. There’s something really fun about that idea. It sounds like a mismatch, but it’s really organic. It’s really hilarious, they’re hilarious together,”

On Presenting Pokemon as Authentic as Possible: “They’re incredibly real, you should think of it as the way [Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy character] Rocket Raccoon sits in the movie as if he’s really there. It’s that technology. The same group of people that worked on that, or worked on Jungle Book. We’ve got the people on it that worked on Fantastic Beasts. They’re technically, some of the most high-end visual effects in the world,” Letterman said. “It’s completely photorealistic, like they are alive and in the movie.”