Apparently, The Pokémon Company has been shopping around Hollywood, courting studios for a live-action movie on the hit franchise spun off one of Nintendo's biggest titles.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a top-secret bidding for film rights to the Pokémon franchise is nearly complete and Legendary Entertainment is doing all it can to swipe the win away from Warner Bros., which has been aggressively pursuing the project as well.
Sony is also interested in a live-action Pokémon movie but Warner Bros. appears to be making great headway, an early favorite to carry out the project given it has already released Pokémon movies, one of which is the first movie for the franchise, the aptly named Pokémon: The First Movie.
Still, THR reports that, according to a source, Legendary is likely to be the victor. This isn't highly problematic given the company is more than capable of taking good care of the Pokémon franchise but there are concerns about Legendary being owned by the Chinese conglomerate Wanda.
The tension between China and Japan even let to the latter banning Japanese movies for three years. The ban has been since lifted, however, and Legendary is making full effort to be part of Japan's film industry.
When Legendary released Godzilla in 2014, it did so with Warner Bros. It seems that when they're not fighting over the Pokémon franchise, they're working together in the Godzilla franchise, planning to release other movies like Kong: Skull Island in 2017, Godzilla 2 in 2018 and Godzilla Vs. Kong after.
Warner Bros. and Sony have not released statements about the bidding war to bring Pokémon to life but we should know more once all the details have been ironed out.
To date, there have been 16 Pokémon movies produced, all animated. The last one, Pokémon the Movie: XYZ is set to come out in Japan on July 16 and within the year in the United States. The last movie in the franchise was Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages, which came out in July 2015.
In other news about the franchise, Pokémon GO has started field tests in Australia and New Zealand. There is no word from Niantic Labs, however, when the mobile game will be released.
What do you think of a live-action Pokémon movie? Let us know in the comments!
