AllMovie

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, Pokémon 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. It was released on May 10, 2019.