BODY: After nearly a decade away from the big screen, Pokémon is dealing itself a bold new hand. On August 31, 2026, The Pokémon Company announced "Pokémon: Wildcard," a full-length animated feature slated for a 2027 release, and opened an official website for the project.
According to the announcement, the film centers on the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) — a first for the series' theatrical outings, which have historically followed Ash, Pikachu, and the video-game creatures rather than the collectible cards. The choice of subject signals just how central the TCG has become to the wider Pokémon universe.
The film marks the first new theatrical Pokémon release in roughly seven years, following "Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle" (Gekijōban Pocket Monsters Coco), which arrived in 2020. That gap is the longest in the franchise's cinematic history, which had delivered a new movie almost every year since 1998.
Details remain thin — the announcement offered a title, a theme, and a launch window, but no plot specifics, cast, or trailer. The freshly launched official site is expected to roll out more information in the months ahead.
The insider take
From Tokyo, the timing reads as no accident. The Pokémon TCG has exploded into a cultural and financial juggernaut in Japan over the past few years, with card shops multiplying across Akihabara and Nakano, resale prices making headlines, and the mobile app Pokémon TCG Pocket pulling in staggering revenue since its 2024 debut. Building a movie around the cards rather than the monsters themselves is a shrewd play to convert that collecting frenzy into a broader narrative franchise — and to reach the adult "kidults" who now drive much of the hobby. Whether a card game can carry an emotional feature-length story is the real wildcard here.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net − 最新記事 (Japanese).