One of the most surreal announcements to come out of the film industry in recent years, the Detective Pikachu movie will feature a live-action setting, a talking Pikachu, and a brand-new take on the Pokemon franchise. According to online sources, filming for Legendary Entertainment's detective-themed movie will commence on January 18, 2018.

The production will reportedly be filmed in London, England, with Rob Letterman (Goosebumps) expected to direct. Very few confirmations have been made at this point, but the Detective Pikachu script will be written by Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls) and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy).

Although no casting announcements have been made so far, the filming is set to begin so soon likely means that Pokemon fans can likely expect a reveal in the coming months. When the announcement was made that Detective Pikachu was getting a live-action movie, an online campaign was started to get the unique talking mouse voiced by none other than It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia star Danny DeVito. Despite 50,000 people signing the petition, however, it seems unlikely that The Pokemon Company is looking in that sort of direction.

In fact, it has not yet been revealed whether or not Detective Pikachu will even see a Western release at this point. The game which inspired the film, a 3DS spin-off title by the name of Great Detective Pikachu where Tim Goodman works together with a highly-intellectual Pokemon to solve mysteries, is currently unavailable outside of the Japanese eShop.

With the vast majority of video game movies being complete disappointments for fans of the original titles, it's hard be optimistic about the huge amount of feature films that are currently in production. After the poor reception of Assassin's Creed, Warcraft, and Ratchet and Clank, it's possible that studios will finally be learning exactly what gamers want from film adaptations but they're going to have to step up their game in order to impress an increasingly impatient audience.

Detective Pikachu is currently awaiting a release date.

Source: Omega Underground