Looks like the very first Pokémon movie is getting a CGI remake
Happy Mew year.
Pokémon fans are poring over the teaser trailer for this year's Pokémon film: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution, set to open in Japan this July.
(This is, by the way, completely separate to 2019's other Pokémon film, the Deadpool-starring Detective Pikachu.)
We've known this movie's title for a while - and it has long sounded like a remake or reimagining of the franchise's very first film Pokémon The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back, released in Japan back in 1998.
Yesterday's teaser trailer has made the above theory even more certain.
The 45-second teaser opens with footage of fans queuing for Pokémon The First Movie, before text promising "The Legend Is Back".
A brief clip of CGI footage then follows, showing Mewtwo and Mew flying through the air.
The film's writer has been pegged as being Takeshi Shudo - despite his death in 2010. Shudo wrote the script for the first three Pokémon films, alongside numerous episodes of the TV series. It would make sense to credit him as writer here if the script is the same.
The most obvious conclusion? Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution is a CGI remake of the original film. If so, it would be the first full remake in Pokémon's annual movie series, and its first fully CGI movie.
The first teaser poster for the movie is a direct reference to the first teaser poster for Pokémon The First Movie, too.
There are still questions to answer. Is it a straight remake of the original or will there be differences? And will this be set in the original series' continuity? The last two animated films took place in a separate, rebooted timeline.
Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution will arrive in time for the 20th anniversary of the original film's Western release, in 1999.
And, handily, it will also not need to spoil any of the new Pokémon expected to feature in the all-new Nintendo Switch Pokémon RPG games expected to launch at this year's end.