Legendary Developing Live Action Detective Pikachu Movie

Detective Pikachu is coming to the big screen. Legendary Entertainment is developing a live action movie centered around the talking Pikachu, with a planned production start date of 2017. No cast was announced.

Legendary Entertainment announced the news via press release, with few details announced about the film. Per the press release, "further details of how his story will be told are being kept under wraps for the moment." Legendary is partnering with the Pokemon Company to produce the film. Toho Studios, the legendary studio behind Godzilla, will distribute the movie in Japan, while Universal will handle distribution to the rest of the world.

Detective Pikachu was first introduced in a short Nintendo 3DS game earlier this year, which was only released in Japan. Unlike most Pokemon, Detective Pikachu can speak to humans and is generally ill-natured, but has a strong love of coffee. Although the game has yet to see an American release, Pokemon fans loved the character and requested that Danny DeVito voice the character should the game be released for an English audience.

(via TheWrap)