Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I missed the Pokemon craze by about half of a generation. My childhood addictions were more in the Ninja Turtles and He-Man realm, but I witnessed the Pokemon explosion firsthand when my little brother started going crazy for the cartoons, the card game and the video games.
I rolled my eyes a bit at this new "kid's stuff" and never really got into it. Fast forward to last week when I downloaded Pokemon Go on a whim and have been walking my ass off all over the neighborhood hitting up my local PokeStops and fighting over the closest gym.
I'm still no expert and am a tad embarrassed by how much I'm digging this game, but what I can tell you is that I've seen and interacted with people aging from 5 and 50 who are caught up in this weird cultural phenomenon. The local hub in South Austin constantly has dozens of people (even over night) gathering together in a sort of mass cultural shared moment the likes of which I haven't really seen since the line for Episode 1.
Even before this craze I saw how primed the youth of today were for a Pokemon movie and have had many conversations with my friends about how the first person to do a Pokemon movie (and do it seriously) will make a billion dollars.
Now that Pokemon Go has more active users than Twitter and Tindr, I'm thinking more like they'll make $2 billion.
The people making that $2 billion might just be Legendary Pictures, according to Deadline. They say the production outfit behind Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy and Warcraft have been in discussions to nab the rights for a Pokemon before and it all kinda fizzled out, but now those negotiations have renewed and while no deal is closed, they hear it's close.
The prime age for this kind of movie ticket buyer grew up with Pokemon and now with Pokemon Go becoming so huge there's a whole generation of kids who view Pokemon as something fresh and new instead of something old. I'm going on record right now saying that if Legendary closes this deal and makes the movie for real and not some goofy shit like the Dragonball Z people did then they'll be printing money.
Pokemon fans want something cool and fun, but not silly. You give them that and you'll have an honest to God massive franchise on your hands.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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