Detective Pikachu, the Pokémon game in which a kindly and intelligent character teams up with a boy called Tim Goodman to solve mysteries, is to be the first instalment in a forthcoming Pokémon movie franchise, with production starting in 2017.
Only released earlier this year, the game has proved one of the most popular in Nintendo’s Pokémon slate.
Pokémon: The First Movie took $163m worldwide in 1999, but the most recent film, Pokémon Heroes, brought in just $28m four years later.
The Pokémon franchise has had mixed success at the box office.