‘Detective Pikachu’ movie was in the works long before Pokémon Go

Hollywood is making a Pikachu movie, and not only because of the success of Pokémon Go.

While Legendary Entertainment and The Pokémon Company revealed they are working together on a Detective Pikachu live-action film in mid-July, around two weeks after the launch of Pokémon Go, the two had started talks long before that game was a sensation. The GPS-powered monster-catching game has players finding familiar creatures in their neighborhood through the use of data from Google Maps, and it is the top-grossing game with more than $200 million in revenues in a month. And when Legendary revealed it won the rights to make a movie based on the franchise, most assumed this was a slapped-together deal because Pokémon Go was everywhere.