Pokémon: Detective Pikachu was an absolute success this summer, and Ryan Reynolds might be playing Pikachu and Deadpool for a long time to come. Reynolds recently shared the main reason that he selected this role ahead of numerous others. As it turns out, he appeared in Detective Pikachu in large part due to his children and his wishes for them.
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The actor lent his voice to the titular Detective Pikachu because it would be a movie that his kids could watch right now with their father in it. Reynolds’ filmography is filled with a lot of movies that may not be suitable for younger audiences. However, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is rated PG and is one of only a couple of films with that rating that Reynolds has a part in, much less starring roles.
The star made note of this in the film’s commentary track, “I was excited to do a film that my kids would love. I don’t do a lot of films that are not rated-R. For me, that’s a big one.” Reynolds has two kids with Blake Lively who are three and five-years-old respectively. A third child is on the way soon as well, so the actor feels its important that he can share a small portion of this work with his growing family.
His kids will have to wait to see Van Wilder, Deadpool, or any of the other R-rated movies. For now, they can see their father on the big screen as the lovable electric mascot for the foreseeable future.
In its opening weekend, Detective Pikachu was a critical and box office success, though having to contend with the unprecedented success of Avengers: Endgame hindered the Pokémon movie’s numbers a little bit. Ryan Reynolds and Justice Smith hauled in $54 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend. To date, it has topped $431 million worldwide. The number is nothing to sneeze at, even with Avengers: Endgame’s consecutive record-breaking weekends using up many moviegoers’ cinematic outings for the year.
What can we expect from other films in the series going forward? The film’s director Rob Letterman told Comicbook.com that there were big plans at Detective Pikachu‘s New York premiere. “It’s its own new world, but it’s tied into the other regions,” Letterman said. “So, it connects into the rest of the Pokémon universe.”
Fans who have seen Pokémon: Detective Pikachu know there are deliberate seeds planted for future films, while telling its own self-contained story in a standalone narrative. “The future I don’t know, we concentrated on this, but we’ve worked very hard to,” Letterman continued. “Detective Pikachu‘s a video game that was in development, sort of in parallel with the movie, and the human story was so great, it made a lot of sense to make a live action movie about it. Then, we really tried hard to tie it and connect it into the overall Pokémon universe. There are countless Easter eggs in the film that, for hardcore fans, they’ll see the links to, you know, all the different Pokémon canon that is out there, starting with literally the first two shots of the film pay tribute to my favorite Pokémon movie that I saw with my kids.”
[h/t CinemaBlend]
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