Pokémon is a media franchise created by video game designer Satoshi Tajiri that centers on fictional creatures called Pokémon. As of 2020, there have been twenty-three animated films and one live action film. The first nineteen animated films are based on the anime television series of the same name, while the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-third are set in an alternate continuity to the anime. The films are produced by animation studios OLM, Production I.G, Xebec, and Wit Studio, and distributed in Japan by Toho, with various studios distributing the films in North America. They were directed by Kunihiko Yuyama and Tetsuo Yajima and written by Takeshi Shudo, Hideki Sonoda, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Shōji Yonemura, Eiji Umehara, and Aya Takaha. The first Pokémon animated film, Pokémon: The First Movie, was released in Japan in 1998, and in 2019 was remade as Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution. A live-action film, Detective Pikachu, was produced by American studio Legendary Entertainment, directed by Rob Letterman, and written by Letterman and Nicole Perlman. It was distributed in Japan by Toho and outside of Japan and China by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was released on May 10, 2019.
The films star Pokémon Trainer Ash Ketchum and his partner Pokémon, Pikachu. Detective Pikachu is based on the 2016 video game Detective Pikachu and stars Ryan Reynolds as the motion capture role of Detective Pikachu, with Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton as the lead human roles.
There are also two animated television specials broadcast on TV Tokyo featuring Ash and his Pikachu and ten animated short films. Warner Bros. licensed the first three animated films in North America and Miramax Films licensed the following four films. From the eighth film onwards, licensing has been handled by The Pokémon Company International themselves, with various distributors handling the releases, such as Viz Media in North America.
The most recent film, Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle, was originally set for release in Japanese theaters on July 10, 2020, but delayed to December 25, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was released on October 8, 2021, in the United States. The next film, Pokémon: Wild Card, will be directed by Katsuhiko Kitada at animation studio CloverWorks and is scheduled to be released in 2027.
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Live-action films
The launch of the mobile game Pokémon Go in 2016 reignited mainstream interest in the Pokémon franchise in the Western market since its initial peak in the early 2000s, and various Hollywood film companies approached The Pokémon Company to gain film rights. Eventually, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Entertainment struck a deal to produce a live-action adaptation of the 2018 video game Detective Pikachu; Pokémon Detective Pikachu, the first official live-action Pokémon film. In January 2019, ahead of the film's release, Legendary began development on a sequel.
Pikachu shorts
Pikachu shorts are a series of twenty-seven animated short films shown at the start of animated theatrical films based on Pokémon, and have also been shown on ANA flights in Japan and released during Christmas as Pikachu's Winter Vacation.
Television specials
These television specials, which run longer than the normal half-hour and are usually not separated into more than one episode in either the original or the dub, are often considered TV Pokémon movies, not counting towards the running total. They do not air in theaters, but are instead broadcast on the same networks that the anime is broadcast on for their premieres. Though they may air around the same time as episodes of the anime, usually in the anime's normal timeslot, they are not assigned episode numbers.
