The Pokémon franchise is arguably the most successful franchise of any variety in the history of the entertainment industry. Dating back to the mid 1990’s, there are more movies, television series, video games and virtually every other type of intellectual property possible in the Pokémon universe than one could confidently keep track of. The animated franchise has sold hundreds of millions, if not billions, of copies of their titles at this point, with generation after generation of children falling in love with the peculiar creatures at its heart. It looks like Pokémon will be trying something a little different with their next project however: a new Pokémon series is currently in the works over at Netflix, and is set to be a live-action production instead.
The first Pokémon series aired back in 1997 and was quickly followed by Pokémon: The First Movie in 1998, immediately captivating children around the globe. Following along with Ash Ketchum and his trusty Pikachu, fans watched the aspiring Pokémon trainer hurdle larger than life obstacles time and time again in pursuit of becoming the very best. Now there are over 1,000 episodes of the Pokémon animated series and nearly two dozen films, but the franchise is far from over. A new Pokémon series is in the early stages of production at Netflix, and is going beyond its typical comfort zone by going the live-action route as opposed to animated. This will be the first attempt to do so since the 2019 film Detective Pikachu starring Ryan Reynolds that was met with respectable reviews, and will be executive produced by Lucifer co-showrunner Joe Henderson. Not much is known about the project yet, but it will certainly be interesting to see the notorious creatures come to life like never before.
Netflix has essentially become the new home for Pokémon after it secured exclusive rights to the franchise last spring. This brought classic series like Pokémon: Indigo League to the streaming platform while additionally providing them the opportunity to produce new, original content. The first example of this will be the upcoming live-action project, but if all goes well this surely will not be the last. Passionate Pokémon fans will just have to wait and see how this live-action project turns out, and remain on the lookout for further updates in the near future.
