 In 2016, after a lot of negotiation from various interested studios, the Pokémon Company decided to bestow the rights for a live-action cinematic adaptation of the Pokémon world to legendary pictures. But there was a catch. While many of the various pitches and treatments for the property focused on the story of Ash Ketchum or Red from the original Pokémon games, the Pokémon Company wanted something different. They were only offering up the rights to one relatively obscure spin-off title, Great Detective Pikachu, a game which had never been released outside of Japan. The Pokémon Company had a good reason for making this decision, and it ultimately impacted the choice of creators who worked on the film, as well as the final tone and style of the first live-action Pokémon movie. This is the story of Detective Pikachu and the other Pokémon movie that was never meant to be. There were a lot of people vying for the rights to Pokémon in 2016. Avi Arad at Sony had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get permission to make a Nintendo movie for many years. Other studios also wanted in on the action. Pokémon seemed like the perfect film, especially considering that it had already been the basis of three theatrically released cartoon movies almost two decades before. This had to compete for the opportunity to make the film, proving that they had what it took to do Pokémon justice. One pitch involved a more or less faithful adaptation of the story of Red, the protagonist of the original Pokémon games on the Nintendo Game Boy, albeit with some changes to key human and Pokémon characters. In this version of the story, the film would centre around Red and his friendship with Blue, a tomboyish girl who lived in his rural hometown. The film was described as an amblin Pokémon movie. It would draw inspiration from Rocky, but also from Harry Potter. Red's father spent too much time away from home in the big city. His mother was a retired Pokémon trainer and her beloved partner, an ageing graveler, had once been a champion fighter. The story would kick off when Red stumbled into the woods and came across his very first Pokémon, a coughing. This film would be a cute, happy, fun, sweet story about friendship, family, and growing up. This kind of film wasn't anything like what the Pokémon Company had in mind. They were only interested in licensing Detective Pikachu. Faced with the option of either changing his pitch or walking away, the screenwriter who developed the rejected coughing movie left the project. As it happens, this turned out to be very good news for the Pokémon Company and legendary pictures alike. Not long after departing from the picture, the screenwriter in question, Max Landis, was accused by many different people of very inappropriate behaviour towards women. Had he still been attached to the Pokémon movie, this could well have had a severe negative effect on the project. Thankfully, the team of creatives who ultimately worked on Detective Pikachu were not embroiled in any similar controversy. Nicole Perlman, who wrote the first draft of the script for Guardians of the Galaxy, brought her talents to this project as well. Perlman outlined the initial story for Detective Pikachu based on the video game that was subsequently translated and released to the West. In the director's chair was Rob Letterman, whose directorial debut had been the 2004 Dreamworks cartoon Shark Tale, and who had most recently directed Goosebumps. Rob was surprised to hear that the Pokémon Company didn't want this film to be an Ash Ketchum movie, but he understood their logic. According to Rob, the Pokémon Company, they've already made many, many movies of Ash, and they came to legendary with this idea of using a new character. So when I came on board, I was pitched this character of Detective Pikachu, and I fell in love with the story behind it. It's a really great story. It was something with a lot of heart, and it was just very unique. And because there's already been so much work done with Ash, for the first live action movie, I thought it was a really good idea to try something new with a new character, but bake it into the universe of Pokémon. So it still follows all the rules, and we get to see a lot of our favourite things. Indeed, Rob was actually very intrigued by the idea of making a Pokémon Detective film. As he read through the translated script for the Detective Pikachu game, he couldn't help but think of a movie he'd been watching recently, David Fincher's Seven. Rob loved the thought of making a gritty, grimy, neon-soaked noir detective story that used cute, colourful video game characters. This was a complete departure from anything that the series had seen before, and it lent itself well to the quirky, colourfully dark film-making that Rob had practised on Goosebumps. The linchpin on Rob's film was a classic noir detective interrogation scene, but with a very unique twist. He wanted to use the nightmare-fuelled Pokémon that is Mr Mime as the witness. He liked the idea of Mr Mime performing all of his testimony silently, in a bizarre game of charades that the story's heroes must decipher. Rob's contacts at the Pokémon Company were not impressed. Not only did this idea seem ridiculous, but they also didn't like that Rob wanted to steer into the disturbing design of Mr Mime, making the character look particularly off-putting to further add to the humour of the scene. Rob tried several times to convince his overseers to change their minds, but to no avail. He really didn't want to lose the scene. It was integral to what he was trying to achieve with the film. So Rob went over their heads and wrote a letter directly to the president of the Pokémon Company, Tsunekazu Ishihara, to explain his idea. To his delight, President Ishihara thought that the scene was absolutely hilarious, and immediately gave his blessing for Rob to make a weird, ugly Mr Mime a central part of the film. And so, the Detective Pikachu movie was born, a truly unique twist on the Pokémon formula that was only possible because everyone involved was pushed to make something different. Perhaps the moral of the story is that sometimes you've got to roll with the punches. Limitations can be a good thing. Rob Letterman came up with his unique, neon-soaked, noir detective Pokémon film, primarily because he wasn't allowed to make a more traditional, obvious movie. But sometimes you need to stand your ground. If Rob had given up when his initial attempt at including Mr Mime was rejected, the final film wouldn't have been quite as weird and wonderful as he'd envisioned. As for when to raise and when to fold, that's anybody's guess. But when you get the balance just right, it's super effective.