Following the Pokémon GO craze, studio Legendary Pictures almost immediately snapped up the rights to create a live-action adaptation of Nintendo’s super successful creature-catching franchise. And while it’s still in its early days, it seems like the project has already snagged a pair of writers to pen a script.
According to Variety, those writers are Nicole Perlman and Alex Hirsch. The former is a veteran of Marvel’s writers program. She was the script originator for Guardians of the Galaxy before James Gunn came on board to co-write and direct. As of now, though, she’s currently co-writing a script for the upcoming Captain Marvel movie alongside Meg LeFauve (a co-writer for Pixar’s Inside Out). The film recently revealed that Oscar winner Brie Larson would be playing the lead role.
Alex Hirsch, meanwhile, is most famous for creating and writing the Disney XD cartoon Gravity Falls, where he also voiced many of the characters. The series ended in February this year with two successful seasons and critical acclaim across the board. Its season 2 finale became the highest-rated telecast ever on Disney XD, having been watched by 2.47 million viewers in the United States.
At the time of writing, the pair are only in negotiations for the project, so nothing has been set in concrete yet — but given the pair’s track record, it’d be foolish to not let them write for the film.
The only other detail we know about the movie is that it’ll feature Detective Pikachu, who so far as only appeared in the currently Japan-only 3DS title Great Detective Pikachu, where he teams up with a young boy to solve mysteries.
The film will be distributed by Universal. While there’s no release date, chances are that Legendary will try and get it out as soon as possible before the Pokémon craze dips down again. It really is like we’re back in the 90s.
