DETECTIVE PIKACHU Will Not Feature Ash Ketchum Because He's Had His Time

Some people may have been surprised to learn that the most famous Pokemon trainer, Ash Ketchum, will not be the star of Detective Pikachu. In fact, he won’t be in the movie! There’s a reason for that. Ash has had countless anime movies made about him and The Pokemon Company decided to give us a new character to focus on. At the 2018 Pokemon World Championship, IGN got to talk to director Rob Letterman about the upcoming film, and this is what he told them:

“There was a long process, before [Smith and Newton] were even involved, of working closely with The Pokemon Company, with Game Freak, with [The Pokemon Company president] Ishihara-san, [Pokemon illustrator] Sugimori-san, and the whole team. Of going through every single Pokemon, different evolutions, and really narrowing down not only the favorites - which, we tried to do as many of those as possible. But also, what worked in the story, and from the visual effects teams’ point of view, what would actually work really well for a live-action movie. Because you do have to remember, the movie is live-action, it’s not animated. We’re using some of the best visual effects companies in the world to bring the characters to life. So it was a combination of all those things.

They’re incredibly real, you should think of it as the way [Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy character] Rocket Raccoon sits in the movie as if he’s really there. It’s that technology. The same group of people that worked on that, or worked on Jungle Book. We’ve got the people on it that worked on Fantastic Beasts. They’re technically, some of the most high-end visual effects in the world. It’s completely photorealistic, like they are alive and in the movie.”

Detective Pikachu will be voiced by Ryan Reynolds and the film is set to release May 10, 2019.