The team behind the Detective Pikachu movie had been trying to get the rights to a Pokemon movie for over 5 years

Most people think that the success of Pokemon GO is what spurred on the Detective Pikachu movie. The Pokemon series was always big, but the explosive success of GO brought in all sorts of other interest, right? When it comes to the Detective Pikachu movie, that's not the case. Producer Cale Boyter reveals that his team had been trying to get their hands on the Pokemon brand for a movie for over 5 years.

"It’s so funny because everyone assumes that Pokémon Go happened and that’s when we wanted the rights to Pokémon, but we’ve been in talks and trying to get to Pokémon for over five years now. It was wonderful. It was a great coincidence that Pokémon Go happened, and it just so happened that that’s when we were finally figuring out the rights, but really it was driven by we love Pokémon and tempering the live action world was just this huge opportunity that had never happened.

It has been a dream project of ours for a long time. I think Detective Pikachu is the why now. It really provided for us a great way into a live action version of this world. It felt very relatable. There was a way into it that people were going to connect with, and it got us really, really excited. The Pokemon Company knows it better than anyone in the world and I think, smartly, they really felt like we need to do this and we need to take that leap at the right moment and we all agreed that Detective Pikachu gave us that."