This past week The Hollywood Reporter revealed that several movie studios are looking into purchasing the live-action films rights for the long running anime and manga Pokemon. This is a anime that is long over due for the live-action treatment. But with recent anime adaptions falling hard like Dragonball: Evolution and the controversy following Ghost in the Shell no wonder it hasn’t been given the light of day. Currently Warner Brothers and Sony are interested in the film rights. However the current front runner of the film rights happens to be Legendary Pictures. After their success with 2014’s Godzilla they may want to bring another iconic Japanese hero to the screen in Pikachu and his friends.
Let’s hope that the screenwriter doesn’t actually follow the story of Ash from Pallet Town if this is made into a feature film. A good suggestion would be to follow the original video game series in Pokemon trainer Red taking on his arch rival Blue while also stopping t the terrorist organization Team Rocket.
While it maybe a while before a screenplay is written on the project or even put into production it’s interesting many studios want these rights. Let’s just hope it breaks the trend of horrible anime adaptions. Strike that…it has to. We currently have several terrible anime adaptations the past decade. One that strikes out the hardest is 2010’s The Last Airbender (technically not an anime but the general audience don’t know that). Let’s see if that franchise is given new life in the next few years by Paramount or if it will have to wait several decades for a reboot.
Interestingly another popular anime Naruto is also said to be granted the live-action treatment. Producer Avi Arad had the film rights to both Naruto and Ghost in the Shell. He just didn’t know which he wanted to do first; well he chose Ghost in the Shell which is in production now so how long before a screenplay is written for Naruto?!
It’s only a matter of time before we gotta catch em all..