The video game genre has been experiencing something of a minor resurgence over the last few years after spending decades battling against a reputation for being cursed. One of the titles leading the charge was Rob Letterman’s 2019 effort Detective Pikachu, despite many folks questioning the decision to make the first live-action Pokemon movie an adaptation of one of the least well known and more mediocre games.
As fate would have it, though, it turned out to be the single most critically acclaimed console-to-screen blockbuster in the history of cinema after ending up with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 67%, while a box office haul of $433 million puts it second among all-time earners, just $6 million shy of record holder Warcraft, so things worked out pretty well for the buddy adventure in the end.
A sequel was announced in January 2019, almost five months before the movie was even released, but that’s all we’ve heard about it since. There’s definitely plenty of money to be made in continuing the franchise, but in a new interview, star Justice Smith admitted that he’s not too convinced it’ll actually end up happening.
“I would love to participate in Detective Pikachu 2. I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I think we have to just kind of bury our hopes. I don’t think it’s going to happen. I really hope so though. Honestly, I’m such a huge fan, who knows, who knows? I hope so.”
On the plus side, it would at least cross another project off of Ryan Reynolds’ to-do list and bring us one step closer to Deadpool 3 finally getting in front of cameras, but there are going to be a lot of folks left disappointed if Detective Pikachu ends up as a one-and-done effort. It was a solid family film that appealed to both longtime fans of the Pokemon brand and the uninitiated alike, while there was some strong worldbuilding on display, too, even if the narrative left a lot to be desired, as it usually does with these kinds of movies.
