Actors make movies for a lot of different reasons. Artistic calling, a desire to win awards, and giant dump trucks full of money are just a few of them. Ryan Reynolds spent years trying to get a Deadpool movie made that would let the comic book character say whatever he wanted. As it turns out, Reynolds success in doing so had a little something to do with his desire to voice the title character in Detective Pikachu as well. He says he wanted to make a movie that his kids could actually watch.
Ryan Reynolds is best known now for his pair of Deadpool movies. However, a quick look at Reynolds entire filmography, from movies like The Hitman's Bodyguard to Life to The Change-Up, shows that while these films are all very different, they have one thing in common, an R-rating. Pokemon Detective Pikachu, however, is only rated PG, which means the actor's kids can actually see, or at least hear, their dad in this one. According to Reynolds...
I was excited to do a film that my kids would love. I don't do a lot of films that are not rated-R. For me, that's a big one.
Ryan Reynolds has two kids with Blake Lively at the moment (with a third on the way) who are three and five-years-old. Needless to say, not only are they two young to watch most of Ryan Reynolds' movies, it's going to be quite some time before that changes.
With kids that young it's difficult to guess how interested they'll even be in Detective Pikachu, but it is certainly the case that this will be one of the first of dad's movies they'll be able to watch.
While Ryan Reynolds has joked that there enough outtakes of Detective Pikachu to make an R-rated cut, by sticking with a PG rating the movie has an incredibly broad audience. Pokemon has been popular for a long time. Many of those people who grew up with it are old enough to see an R-rated movie today, but Pokemon is still making new fans every day thanks to video games and anime, and Detecitve Pikachu is a movie new fans can love and old fans can still appreciate.
Based on the bonus features that come along with the new Detective Pikachu Blu-ray, where Reynolds makes these comments, it seems clear that pretty much everybody loved making Detective Pikachu while stars Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton were Pokemon fans from when they were kids, others, like director Rob Letterman, had kids who were fans.
Based on the success that Detective Pikachu had at the box office, it seems quite likely there's more to come from this live-action Pokemon universe. We could see sequels as well as spinoffs focusing on other popular Pokemon. There are, after all, hundreds of the things to choose from.
Detective Pikachu is now available on Digital HD and Blu-ray
