Pokemon: Detective Pikachu 2 gets closer to release with new director

2019’s Pokémon: Detective Pikachu was a big enough global hit for Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Entertainment, and The Pokémon Company to warrant a sequel, and yet fans of the pocket monsters entered 2023 with little to no update on what might be next for the budding live-action franchise. Now we have the answer: Deadline reported that Legendary has been in discussions with a new creative company to handle the hypothetical. Pokémon: Detective Pikachu 2.

According to the report, Jonathan Krisel is the co-creator and creator of IFC’s sketch comedy series. Portlandia and the FX series BasketsChris Galletta will likely succeed Rob Letterman as director.Summer’s KingsNow, he is on script duties. It’s unclear whether Ryan Reynolds would return to voice Pikachu — the ending of Detective Pikachu certainly raises questions of how exactly that would be possible — but Deadline suggests the DeadpoolBased on the direction, an actor might be asked to perform a specific role.

Earlier this year, in our hunt for answers as to the status of the dormant sequel, Legendary told Polygon that the movie was still in active development — just as it was in 2019. Even before Detective PikachuLegendary had hired Oren Uziel to write the first episode. Oren was a scriptwriter. 22 Jump Street Draft of Sonic the HedgehogTo work on the sequel. Uziel representatives told Polygon that he had written the outline and screenplay, but he wasn’t involved in the actual film. Krisel and Galletta could be working off Uziel’s draft or starting fresh, but as of now, there’s no sense of timeline for the actual film, which at this point does not have a release date.

Legendary Entertainment’s attempt to muck up the work has led to a strained relationship with Warner Bros. Detective PikachuLegendary, the core distributor for the film studio, has signed a new agreement with Sony Pictures. Detective PikachuWB is likely to keep it. Meanwhile, Netflix remains a player in the Pokémon content game, with a brand new stop-motion Pokémon anime set for 2023 and a live-action series reportedly in development.

Big question: What will be first? The new or the old? Detective Pikachu movie or the game sequel that Nintendo announced in 2019 that also hasn’t come to fruition?