Ryan Reynolds provided Pikachu’s voice and motion capture in the 2019 film Detective Pikachu.
The movie was the first live-action film based on the Pokémon franchise. Reynolds played the talking Detective Pikachu, while Justice Smith played Tim Goodman, a young man searching for his missing father in Ryme City.
Motion capture allowed Reynolds’ performance to guide Pikachu’s physical acting, while his recorded voice supplied the character’s dialogue. The film combines live-action human performers with computer-generated Pokémon, including Pikachu, Charizard, and Mewtwo.
Detective Pikachu was loosely based on the 2016 Nintendo 3DS game of the same name. It was directed by Rob Letterman and released in Japan on May 3, 2019, followed by its United States release on May 10. The role is sometimes confused with Pikachu’s long-running Japanese anime voice, performed by Ikue Ōtani.