The love story between Netflix and the world of video games is well established. After producing famous game adaptations like The Witcher and Castlevania as well as documentaries chronicling the history of the industry like High Score: The Golden Age of Gaming , the US SVoD service is reportedly gearing up for another big suddenly in partnership with one of the biggest franchises of the video game according to the sources of the site Variety source
So Netflix is currently developing a live action Pokémon TV series .
Nintendo and cinema, a new passion?
This is big news when you consider the importance of the Pokémon brand not only in the video game market, but also in merchandising and japanimation. If Pokémon has never balked at exporting to the big and small screen through many animes, it was not until 2019 and the release of the film Detective Pikachu to see the pocket monsters exchange with humans in the flesh.
Many were then surprised to see Nintendo - and the Pokémon Company - allow the use of its characters in such a format, something that one could never have envisaged there is one where the mere mention of cinematic apadatation of games Nintendo brought back bad memories of the Super Mario Bros. movie . from 1993.
From Lucifer in pokédex
Relative to theatrical success, Detective Pikachu has proven that the recipe can take, and Netflix could score a big hit with such a production. The SVoD service would have attached Joe Henderson, one of the producer and showrunner of the Lucifer series , to the project intended for the small screen.
This is not, however, the first that Netflix has taken on a Nintendo license. In 2015, the American group had the ambition to adapt the franchise of action-adventure games The Legend of Zelda, also in the format of a live-action television series. A claympotion series adapted from the Starfox games was also in the works. But leaks relayed by the Wall Street Journal would have pushed Nintendo to simply cancel these projects at Netflix. We hope that fate reserves a less fatal fate for PIkachu and others ...