A new Pokemon live-action series is in early development at Netflix – with Lucifer’s Joe Henderson attached – a new report from Variety has revealed.
It looks like Netflix really is hungry for all the gaming content it can get. Further to shows based on gaming IP like Castlevania, Resident Evil, and The Witcher, Variety reports that the streaming giant is also working on a live-action Pokemon series.
“As the project is still in its early days, no details are available about the plot,” says the site, though it does note that Joe Henderson is attached to write and executive produce. You may recognize Henderson as the co-showrunner and executive producer on the Netflix series Lucifer.
It seems the success of the live-action Pokemon movie, Detective Pikachu, may have inspired the choice, especially since Detective Pikachu had the best opening weekend and strongest reviews of any videogame movie adaptation ever.
It’s not too surprising to learn that the streaming giant is keen on leveraging the popularity of the Pokemon brand: Pokemon: Indigo League, Pokemon Journeys and other Pokemon anime consistently perform well on the service. It makes sense that Netflix would want to ride that popularity with a show produced by its own studio(s).
This comes off the back of Netflix announcing that its first games will be on mobile at no additional charge to subscribers. We’ve also recently seen PlayStation-related images of both a DualSense controller and Ghost of Tsushima have been discovered hidden within the Netflix app.
It’s clear that the company is doing it’s best to move into gaming, and it’s making some strong allies in its push into the industry.