How long has Ryan Reynolds known he would one day be the most popular Pokemon in the world?

Yesterday, we reported the shocking news that Reynolds, the star of Deadpool, would become the new "face" of the Pokemon franchise as the star of the upcoming live-action Detective Pikachu movie. Reynolds will voice the film's title character, an English-speaking Pikachu who teams up with a young boy (played by Justice Smith) to solve a mysterious string of Pokemon going feral and turning on their trainers.

The announcement was surprising, even though Reynolds was on the shortlist of stars for the film, which also included Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Hugh Jackman and Mark Wahlberg. However, in hindsight, Reynolds may have hinted at the role way back in 2016.

Last year, we reported on an amazing bit of fanart (seen below) of a Deadpool Pikachu that Reynolds had shared on his Twitter account. At the time, we thought it was just a high quality depiction of the "Electric Mouse with a Mouth," but it could be that Reynolds may have known that he was destined to play Pikachu on the small screen.

I don't know who made this, but thank you. #MaximumEffort pic.twitter.com/nH1ywqeshN — Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) September 22, 2016

Of course, at the time when Reynolds posted that tweet, Detective Pikachu was still very early in the pre-production phases. Legendary Pictures had only announced that they were working on a live-action Pokemon movie in July 2016, and it was revealed a month later that Alex Hirsch and Nicole Perlman were writing a script based on the Great Detective Pikachu video game. Still, it's possible that Reynolds had either been contacted as an early contender for the role...or he just knew that it was fate that he'd one day be Pikachu.

Ironically, Deadpool director Tim Miller was at one point linked to the Detective Pikachu as a potential director of the film. Eventually, that role went to Goosebumps direct Rob Letterman.

In addition to Reynolds and Smith, Kathryn Newton will also star in Detective Pikachu. Filming will begin in early 2018.