Which Pokémon film was the franchise’s first official live-action feature?

Pokémon Detective Pikachu was the Pokémon franchise’s first official live-action feature film.

Released in 2019, the movie was directed by Rob Letterman and stars Justice Smith as Tim Goodman, who teams up with a talking Detective Pikachu to investigate his father’s disappearance. Ryan Reynolds provides Pikachu’s voice and motion-capture performance.

The film is loosely based on the 2016 Nintendo 3DS game Detective Pikachu, rather than directly adapting the main Pokémon game series or the long-running animated television show. Legendary Entertainment produced the movie in collaboration with The Pokémon Company, and Warner Bros. handled its international distribution outside Japan and China.

Earlier Pokémon films were animated, including Pokémon: The First Movie, which was released in Japan in 1998. The distinction between “first Pokémon film” and “first live-action Pokémon film” is therefore important: Detective Pikachu was not the franchise’s first movie overall, but it was the first official feature to place digitally created Pokémon alongside live-action human performers.