Pokémon Detective Pikachu

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POKÉMON Detective Pikachu is the first live-action Pokémon film, and the first made by a Hollywood studio. Produced by Legendary Pictures and released by Warner Bros. (Toho in Japan) in May 2019, it adapts the Nintendo 3DS game Detective Pikachu rather than the anime: there is no Ash, no Gym and no Poké Ball in sight. Instead there is Ryme City, a gleaming metropolis where people and Pokémon live and work side by side, a missing detective, a purple gas that drives Pokémon wild, and a coffee-loving Pikachu in a deerstalker who talks like Ryan Reynolds – to one person only.

That person is Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), a 21-year-old insurance clerk who gave up on Pokémon after his mother died and has barely spoken to his father since. When Harry Goodman is reported killed in a car crash, Tim travels to Ryme City to settle his affairs, meets Harry’s amnesiac partner, and is dragged into a case that leads from an illegal battle club to a ruined laboratory and the city’s founding family. Kathryn Newton plays the ambitious junior reporter Lucy Stevens, Bill Nighy the billionaire Howard Clifford and Ken Watanabe the police lieutenant Hide Yoshida, with Ikue Ōtani – Pikachu’s voice since 1997 – supplying the “Pika pika” everyone else hears.

Every Pokémon on screen is computer-generated, built by MPC and Framestore to look as if it could exist: Pikachu has fur, Charizard has scales, Psyduck has the feathers of a very stressed duck. The film made $433 million worldwide – more than any other Pokémon film – set an opening-weekend record for a video-game adaptation in the US, and was the first live-action video-game film to earn a “Fresh” Rotten Tomatoes rating. You can read our original 2019 verdict in Film Review: Detective Pikachu.

Where it fits in the Pokémon world
Detective Pikachu stands entirely outside the anime’s continuity. It is based on Detective Pikachu for Nintendo 3DS by Creatures Inc., which began in Japan as a download-only first chapter on 3 February 2016 and was released in full in Japan, North America and Europe on 23 March 2018; its own sequel, Detective Pikachu Returns (Nintendo Switch, 6 October 2023), even refers back to a film about the “R” case. The film keeps the game’s premise – Tim, Harry, Lucy, Ryme City and a Pikachu only Tim can understand – but writes its own mystery and, unlike the game, solves it. When it opened in Japan on 3 May 2019, the TV anime was midway through Sun & Moon – Ultra Legends, with Ash at the Pokémon School in Alola, and the next anime film, Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution, followed ten weeks later on 12 July. Ryme City itself is never placed on a map: it is a world of its own, where Poké Balls and battles are banned and every Pokémon has a human partner.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu is made up of the following parts

• POKÉMON Detective Pikachu – the main feature, 104 minutes, with no opening theme and no Pikachu short
• The end credits – Henry Jackman’s arrangement of Junichi Masuda’s Red & Blue theme, “Carry On” by Kygo and Rita Ora, and “ELECTRICITY” by Honest Boyz featuring Lil Uzi Vert

Story

Leaventown

A night-time prologue: something escapes from a secret laboratory in the hills outside Ryme City, and in the chaos a car plunges off a bridge. Far away, in the small country town of Leaventown, 21-year-old Tim Goodman sells insurance. He wanted to be a Pokémon Trainer as a boy, but after his mother died and his father moved to the city for his police work, Tim gave up on Pokémon and on Harry. His friend Jack tries to talk him into catching a wild Cubone, and the attempt goes about as badly as it could. Then the phone rings: Harry Goodman has died in a car accident in Ryme City.

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Ryme City

On the train a promotional film introduces Howard Clifford, the ailing billionaire who built Ryme City as a place where people and Pokémon could live as equals: no wild Pokémon, no Poké Balls, no battles, a partner for everyone. Tim arrives in a city full of Pokémon at work – Machamp directing traffic, Snorlax asleep in the road – and goes to the police station, where Harry’s friend Lieutenant Hide Yoshida offers his condolences and the keys to Harry’s flat. The flat is full of reminders of the son Harry neglected, and of the case he was working on.

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A Pikachu in a deerstalker

Searching the flat, Tim knocks over a vial labelled “R”. The purple gas sends a gang of Aipom berserk, and Tim is saved by a Pikachu in a deerstalker who scolds him in perfect English. Tim is the only one who can understand him; to everyone else he says “Pika pika”. The Pikachu says he was Harry’s partner, that he has lost his memory, and that he is a detective – and since no body was found at the crash, he is convinced Harry is still alive. Tim, who wants nothing more than to go home, reluctantly agrees to help him find out.

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Lucy, Mr. Mime and the Roundhouse

They team up with Lucy Stevens, a junior reporter at CNM stuck writing fluff pieces who suspects there is more to Harry’s case, and her permanently anxious Psyduck. An interrogation of Harry’s informant – a Mr. Mime, questioned entirely in mime – points them to the Roundhouse, an underground arena for illegal Pokémon battles run by Sebastian. Sebastian sets his Charizard on Pikachu, the Roundhouse fills with R, every Pokémon in the building goes into a frenzy and a Magikarp evolves into a rampaging Gyarados. Afterwards Yoshida shows Tim the footage of the crash: nobody, he says, could have survived it.

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Clifford Tower

Howard Clifford summons Tim and Pikachu to his tower through his assistant, Ms. Norman. He shows them his Eevee evolving into Flareon as proof of his faith in what Pokémon and people could become, then plays a holographic reconstruction of the crash in which Mewtwo lifts Harry from the wreck. He names his own son, Roger, as the man behind R. Lucy’s digging turns up an abandoned Clifford research centre, the PCL, and the name of the neurologist who worked there on Mewtwo, Dr. Ann Laurent.

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The PCL laboratory

The ruined laboratory holds genetically altered Pokémon and the records that explain R: it was synthesised from Mewtwo’s DNA. A pack of Greninja attacks, and Psyduck’s headache finally boils over into a psychic blast that sends them flying. The forest floor outside turns out to be the backs of a herd of giant Torterra, and Pikachu is badly hurt in the escape. A wild Bulbasaur leads Tim to Mewtwo, which heals Pikachu and shows him a vision – before a man who looks like Roger Clifford traps it. Believing he betrayed Harry, Pikachu walks away from Tim.

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The parade

Back at the crash site, Pikachu works out that it was Greninja that caused the accident – so Howard has been lying. At Ryme City’s anniversary parade Howard reveals his plan: wearing Dr. Laurent’s neural headset, he moves his mind into the captive Mewtwo and releases R from the parade balloons, merging the people of Ryme City with their partner Pokémon, Lucy and Yoshida among them. Ms. Norman turns out to be Howard’s Ditto, which had also been posing as Roger; the real Roger is found tied up. Ditto fights Tim through a string of transformations while Pikachu takes on the Howard–Mewtwo hybrid.

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Father and son

Tim pulls the headset off Howard, freeing Mewtwo, which undoes the fusions across the city; Howard is arrested, and Roger promises to repair his father’s damage – promoting Lucy to on-air reporter while he is at it. Then Mewtwo explains the one mystery left. After the crash it saved the dying Harry the only way it could, by merging him with his Pikachu partner, and the shock wiped both their memories. It separates them, and Harry Goodman stands in front of his son for the first time in years. Tim decides to stay in Ryme City, to train as a detective and get to know his father – and Pikachu stays too.

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Major Characters

Tim Goodman (Justice Smith / Ryōma Takeuchi) is the film’s reluctant hero: a former would-be Trainer from Leaventown who has shut Pokémon out of his life along with his father, and the only person in Ryme City who can understand what Pikachu says. Detective Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds / Hidetoshi Nishijima) is amnesiac, caffeine-dependent, wisecracking and convinced of his own genius; in battle he uses Thunderbolt, Electro Ball and a Volt Tackle that hurts him as much as anyone. Reynolds provided both the voice and the facial motion capture, while Ikue Ōtani voices the ordinary Pikachu cries in both languages.
Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton / Marie Iitoyo) is a junior reporter at CNM, the Clifford-owned news network, desperate for a real story, and partner to a Psyduck that is always one headache from disaster. Lieutenant Hide Yoshida (Ken Watanabe, who dubbed himself in Japanese) is Harry’s friend on the force and never seen without his Snubbull. Harry Goodman is the absent centre of the story – Tim’s father, a Ryme City detective, presumed dead.
Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy / Hiroshi Naka) is the billionaire who founded Ryme City and the film’s true villain, a man with a degenerative illness who wants to escape his own body. His son Roger Clifford (Chris Geere / Shin-ichirō Miki) runs CNM and is set up to take the blame. Dr. Ann Laurent (Rita Ora / Megumi Hayashibara) is the neurologist who created R and the neural headset, and Mewtwo – voiced in English by two blended voices, Rina Hoshino and Kotaro Watanabe – turns out to be the city’s protector rather than its threat.

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Other Characters & Pokémon

Sebastian (Omar Chaparro, who also dubbed himself in Latin American Spanish) runs the Roundhouse with his Charizard; Ms. Norman (Suki Waterhouse) is Howard’s assistant and, in truth, his genetically modified Ditto; Jack (Karan Soni) is Tim’s friend in Leaventown and Grams (Josette Simon) his grandmother. The DJ at the Roundhouse is the real-life DJ and producer Diplo, playing himself.

The rest of the cast is Pokémon. The Mr. Mime informant, the Aipom gang, the Greninja assassins, the giant Torterra and the Bulbasaur that lead Tim to Mewtwo all have scenes of their own, and the streets of Ryme City are filled with dozens more – a Jigglypuff singing a café to sleep, Lickitung, Golurk, Squirtle, Pancham and a crowd of Joltik among them. Visual-effects supervisor Erik Nordby said around 65 Pokémon were designed for the film, about 25 of which never made it into the finished cut.

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Pokémon in the film

As the first live-action Pokémon film, every one of these Pokémon made its photorealistic debut here – 58 species in all, from Bulbasaur to Comfey. Mewtwo is the only Legendary Pokémon in the film.

• Bulbasaur#0001 · guides Tim to Mewtwo
• Venusaur#0003
• Charmander#0004
• Charizard#0006 · Sebastian’s
• Squirtle#0007
• Blastoise#0009
• Pidgeotto#0017
• Pidgeot#0018
• Rattata#0019
• Pikachu#0025 · Detective Pikachu
• Jigglypuff#0039
• Psyduck#0054 · Lucy’s
• Growlithe#0058
• Arcanine#0059
• Machoke#0067
• Machamp#0068
• Graveler#0075
• Magnemite#0081
• Doduo#0084
• Dodrio#0085
• Haunter#0093
• Gengar#0094
• Kingler#0099
• Cubone#0104
• Lickitung#0108
• Mr. Mime#0122 · Harry’s informant
• Magikarp#0129
• Gyarados#0130
• Ditto#0132 · Howard’s
• Eevee#0133 · Howard’s
• Flareon#0136
• Snorlax#0143
• Mewtwo#0150 · the source of R
• Totodile#0158
• Togepi#0175
• Aipom#0190
• Snubbull#0209 · Yoshida’s
• Sneasel#0215
• Octillery#0224
• Treecko#0252
• Ludicolo#0272
• Slaking#0289
• Loudred#0294 · the Roundhouse speakers
• Torterra#0389 · a moving forest
• Purrloin#0509
• Audino#0531
• Emolga#0587
• Joltik#0595
• Golurk#0623
• Bouffalant#0626
• Rufflet#0627
• Braviary#0628
• Greninja#0658 · Howard’s assassins
• Flabébé#0669
• Pancham#0674
• Pangoro#0675
• Morelull#0755
• Comfey#0764

Cast

Detective Pikachu is the first Pokémon film with a live-action cast, so the second column lists the actors on screen and the third the Japanese dub. The Japanese dub is a reunion of the anime’s voice cast: all three Team Rocket voices (Megumi Hayashibara, Shin-ichirō Miki and Inuko Inuyama) appear, alongside Kenta Miyake (the anime’s Giovanni), Yūki Kaji (Clemont) and Kōichi Yamadera, Mew’s voice in the anime films, as one of Mewtwo’s two voices.

Character	Actor (English version)	Japanese dub
Detective Pikachu	Ryan Reynolds (voice and facial motion capture)	Hidetoshi Nishijima
Pikachu (as everyone else hears him)	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Tim Goodman	Justice Smith (Max Fincham as young Tim)	Ryōma Takeuchi
Lucy Stevens	Kathryn Newton	Marie Iitoyo
Lieutenant Hide Yoshida	Ken Watanabe	Ken Watanabe
Howard Clifford	Bill Nighy	Hiroshi Naka
Roger Clifford	Chris Geere	Shin-ichirō Miki
Dr. Ann Laurent	Rita Ora	Megumi Hayashibara
Ms. Norman	Suki Waterhouse	–
Sebastian	Omar Chaparro	Kenta Miyake
Jack	Karan Soni	Yūki Kaji
Grams	Josette Simon	Inuko Inuyama
DJ at the Roundhouse	Diplo (as himself)	Kaito Ishikawa
Mewtwo	Rina Hoshino and Kotaro Watanabe	Kōichi Yamadera and Sayaka Kinoshita
Jigglypuff	Rachael Lillis (archive recording)	Mika Kanai
Psyduck	–	Rikako Aikawa

Trailer

Official Trailer #1, released by Warner Bros. on 12 November 2018. More than 100 million people watched it across platforms in its first 24 hours.

Official Trailer 2, released on 26 February 2019, which revealed Mewtwo, Ludicolo and Snorlax.

Trading Cards

The film had its own Pokémon Trading Card Game set. Detective Pikachu was released on 29 March 2019, six weeks ahead of the film: 18 cards with 3D artwork supplied by the film’s visual-effects houses, MPC and Framestore, sold only in themed products such as Case Files, Collector Chests and tins, in four-card packs where every card is holofoil. Japan’s version, the Movie Special Pack Great Detective Pikachu (26 April 2019), had 25 cards, adding Charizard-GX, Greninja-GX, Mewtwo-GX and a full-art Lt. Yoshida Supporter.

The cinema promo was Detective Pikachu SM190, illustrated by Framestore, with the attacks Coffee Break and Corkscrew Punch: participating cinemas gave out two-card packs containing it and one random card from the set with tickets, and in the UK Odeon and Cineworld handed them out with 3D screenings on the opening weekend, 10–12 May 2019. Further Black Star Promos came with Case Files, figure collections and in-store movie events. Every card is listed in full on our Detective Pikachu set page, and our 2019 preview, Detecting the Detective Pikachu TCG Sets, looks at the products in more detail.

• Detective PikachuDetective Pikachu 10/18 · Rare Holo
• MewtwoDetective Pikachu 12/18 · Rare Holo
• GreninjaDetective Pikachu 9/18 · Rare Holo
• CharizardDetective Pikachu 5/18 · Rare Holo
• DittoDetective Pikachu 17/18 · Rare Holo
• Mr. MimeDetective Pikachu 11/18 · Rare Holo
• PsyduckDetective Pikachu 7/18
• SnubbullDetective Pikachu 15/18
• Detective PikachuSM190 Black Star Promo · the cinema promo
• Detective PikachuSM170 Black Star Promo · Café Figure Collection
• Charizard-GXSM195 Black Star Promo · Charizard-GX Case File
• Mewtwo-GXSM196 Black Star Promo · Mewtwo-GX Case File
• Greninja-GXSM197 Black Star Promo · Greninja-GX Case File
• Lt. YoshidaGreat Detective Pikachu 025/024 (Japan) · full-art Supporter

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for Detective Pikachu: the teaser and the four main theatrical posters, the iTunes, Dolby Cinema and RealD 3D versions, the three Japanese posters (including the IMAX edition), and the Australian DVD, Blu-ray, 4K and SteelBook covers. The US, UK and Japanese home-video covers are still wanted.

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Trivia & Facts

• It is the first live-action Pokémon film, the first Pokémon film rated PG by the MPAA (the anime films were rated G or unrated), the most expensive at $150 million and the highest-grossing Pokémon film of all time.
• Universal originally won the distribution rights outside Japan; Warner Bros. – which had released the first three anime films in American cinemas – took them over on 25 July 2018.
• Danny DeVito had his voice tested for Pikachu, and Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg and Hugh Jackman were all considered before Ryan Reynolds was cast in December 2017. Reynolds wanted to give Pikachu a film-noir voice and was talked out of it.
• Ikue Ōtani, the anime’s Pikachu since 1997, voices Pikachu’s ordinary “Pika pika” in both the English and Japanese versions – the voice everyone except Tim hears.
• Ryōma Takeuchi, Tim’s Japanese voice, also appears on screen as a Pokémon Trainer in a video Tim watches; Rob Letterman added the cameo after meeting him at a Japanese press event.
  

  

• Pikachu shouts “Serenity now!” at Psyduck, borrowing the catchphrase from a 1997 episode of Seinfeld, and “Sweet mother of Arceus” is the first time official Pokémon media used Arceus in place of God.
• Mewtwo’s escape from the laboratory, and its line “They’re outside”, echo Pokémon: The First Movie; a document at the PCL says Mewtwo was last seen in Kanto twenty years earlier, a nod to Pokémon Red and Blue.
• The Jigglypuff that sings a café customer to sleep uses archive recordings of Rachael Lillis, its English voice in the anime.
• The Torterra herd whose backs form a moving forest comes straight from Torterra’s Pokédex entries, which say small Pokémon sometimes make their nests on its back.
• Pikachu’s fur took the effects team around four to five months to groom, and every design went through four stages – concept art, a 3D turntable, a rigged animation test and the final model – each approved by Letterman and The Pokémon Company in Tokyo.
• The film was shot on film rather than digitally, between January and May 2018, in London, at Shepperton and Leavesden studios, in Scotland and in Colorado; the crowd and fight sounds for Pikachu’s battle with Charizard were recorded among the audience at the 2018 Pokémon World Championships.
• Scenes with Golbat and Gardevoir were written but cut, and Rob Delaney’s role as Tim’s co-worker did not survive the edit.
• Ryan Reynolds promoted the film with a fake “full movie” upload that was really 1 hour 42 minutes of Pikachu dancing; it drew more than four million views in a day.

Errors

• Tim talks about “Aipoms” and Pikachu about “Greninjas”, although Pokémon names never take a plural “s”.
• Greninja’s normally yellow markings are pale blue. The Art and Making of Pokémon Detective Pikachu puts this down to the PCL’s genetic modification, but Greninja that were never modified share the same colouring.
  

  

• Psyduck’s psychic blast knocks the Greninja flying, but as Water/Dark types they should be immune to Psychic attacks.
• When Tim knocks over the paper coffee cups in Harry’s office, they clatter like plastic or metal.
• A flashback to Mewtwo’s escape shows Dr. Laurent standing in front of the containment chamber, although she was not there when the scene was first shown.

Reviews & Reception

Detective Pikachu opened in Japan on 3 May 2019 at number three, reached number one in its second weekend and had passed ¥2.7 billion by its seventh week; in the US it took $54.4 million in its opening weekend (10–12 May), the best start for a video-game film until Sonic the Hedgehog in 2020, finishing second only to Avengers: Endgame. China added $93.7 million and the UK opened at number one. The worldwide total of $433 million made it the highest-grossing Pokémon film by a distance and, at the time, the second-highest-grossing video-game film ever behind Warcraft, although it fell short of what its $150 million budget and reported $100 million marketing campaign had hoped for.

Critics were divided but warmer than they had been to any video-game film before it. Ryan Reynolds’ comic performance and the believable, tactile Pokémon designs were praised almost everywhere, and Forbes and CNET both called it the best video-game film yet; the complaints were a convoluted mystery that leans heavily on exposition, an uneven tone and a thin relationship between Tim and Pikachu. Rotten Tomatoes’ consensus said, in short, that the film never fully commits to how strange its premise is, but that its offbeat charm should keep most Pokémon fans happy. Audiences liked it more: it earned an A− CinemaScore. It was nominated for an Annie Award for its character animation, as well as at the Teen Choice and People’s Choice Awards, but won nothing.

Our own review in May 2019 found it a fresh take that sidestepped the battles and Pokédex-filling of the games and anime, with excellent Pokémon designs, a self-aware script full of references and a surprisingly good Ryan Reynolds – held back by a few forced emotional scenes, clichéd characters, uneven pacing and a score that clashed with the games’ music:

“You won’t be in for a five-star-wow-this-changed-my-life type of film, but that’s a good thing. Overall, it is an enjoyable watch for audiences of any kind.” – Film Review: Detective Pikachu

The film topped the US DVD and Blu-ray charts on release in August 2019 and had sold more than $30 million on disc there a year later. A sequel was announced before the first film even opened: Oren Uziel was hired to write it in January 2019, Legendary said it was in “active development” in February 2023, and Deadline reported a month later that Jonathan Krisel was in talks to direct from a script by Chris Galletta. As of October 2026 nothing further has been announced. The next Pokémon film actually on its way is the animated Pokémon: Wild Card, due from 2027.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.5/10 user rating from more than 200,000 votes
• Rotten Tomatoes – 68% from 317 critics (average 6/10) · 82% audience score
• Metacritic – 53/100 from 48 critics (“mixed or average”) · user score 7.4
• CinemaScore – A− from opening-weekend audiences
• Letterboxd – 3.0/5 average