Legendary Pictures and The Pokémon Company are working to deliver a live-action adaptation of Detective Pikachu. The 3DS game was released earlier this year in Japan and features the titular pocket monster as a deerstalker hat-wearing sleuth who works and communicates with humans. Talk of an intensifying bidding war over the franchise's film rights surfaced last week amid the growing and near-universal popularity of Pokémon Go. Now it appears Legendary has indeed secured the lucrative deal, reports Deadline.

Detective Pikachu's storyline focused on the iconic yellow electric mouse teaming up with a boy named Tim to search for the boy's missing father. It's unclear whether the live-action version will have an identical or even similar narrative. There's no concrete release date or any big names attached. But the film will be distributed by Universal outside of Japan and production is set to begin next year. Deadline says the live-action Detective Pikachu could be expanded into a feature franchise.

The inspiring story of an electric mouse creature hunting for a young boy's missing father

It's definitely not going to be your standard pokémon movie. Past films in the franchise have been animated spin-offs from the television series, in which main character Ash and his companion Pikachu often get wrangled into dealing with powerful and ancient creatures known as legendary pokémon. The version of Pikachu in Detective Pikachu is even a bit more mature than its animated counterpart, choosing to drink coffee and flirt with girls. In other words, it's going to get weird.