Ryan Reynolds played Detective Pikachu’s voice and motion-capture role in the 2019 live-action Pokémon film.
Directed by Rob Letterman, Pokémon Detective Pikachu was based on the 2016 Nintendo 3DS game Detective Pikachu. Reynolds supplied the performance for the talking Pikachu, while Justice Smith played human protagonist Tim Goodman and Kathryn Newton played journalist Lucy Stevens.
The film was released in Japan and North America on May 10, 2019. It combined live-action human actors with computer-generated Pokémon, making it the first live-action Pokémon feature film and one of the franchise’s most prominent anniversary-era adaptations.
The role is sometimes confused with Pikachu’s regular animated voice, which is provided by Ikue Ōtani in the Japanese anime and many related productions. Detective Pikachu is a separate interpretation: an unusually talkative, coffee-loving detective voiced in English by Reynolds.