With its opening weekend in the books, Detective Pikachu looks to be a hit. The film from Legendary Pictures saw box office returns of $58 million domestically, making it the biggest opening weekend for a video game film of all time, dethroning 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
Domestically, the film fell just short of dethroning Avengers: Endgame, but managed to unseat the Marvel Studios megalith in Nintendo’s home country of Japan. Raking in $170 million globally, Detective Pikachu has out-earned the film’s $150 million budget in the first few days following its release.
Legendary has already begun development on a sequel film, announcing on January 25 that it had hired Oren Uziel (Sonic the Hedgehog, 22 Jump Street) to pen the follow-up. In fact, a greater Pokémon cinematic universe may well be in the works. Rumours have swirled regarding a film based on the Pokemon franchise’s first entries, versions Red and Blue.
In an interview with IGN, Legendary Entertainment producer Ali Mendes noted the opportunities available for future films:
[Pokémon is] such a rich universe. There are so many ways you can go inside of it. We’re trying to get the first movie right, and then once we’ve done that, we’ll see where we go from there, but absolutely. There are a lot of opportunities
With no major family films set to release until Disney’s Aladdin premieres on May 24th, Detective Pikachu seems likely to continue its strong box office performance into its second weekend.
