The Pokémon Company has announced that it’s developing an unscripted television series focusing on the Pokémon Trading Card Game. It’s also unveiled an open casting call for fans “of all ages and interests” based in the Los Angeles, California area.
No TV production company is listed on the press release sent out by The Pokémon Company. Legal documents affiliated with the open casting call list “Buckingham Television Inc.” as the production company behind the effort, with Los Angeles-area production company Front Foot First listed as the casting company.
A cross-search of California corporation registrations shows that Buckingham Television shares an address and CEO with The Intellectual Property Corporation (IPC). IPC is the production company behind documentary series like Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath on the A&E Network, and drag queen road trip series We’re Here on HBO.
It doesn’t look like the Pokémon Trading Card Game unscripted series will be a competition show. Vice president of The Pokémon Trading Card Game Barry Sams said that the company is looking to highlight “dedicated competitors in the Play! Pokémon program and casual players battling after school with friends and family.”
Pokémon Trading Card Game collectors are also in the spotlight
The show will apparently also focus on “collectors or general enthusiasts.” Pokémon Trading Card Game collecting became headline news in the COVID-19 pandemic, as skyrocketing card prices drove increased interest in collecting and flipping Pokémon cards.
It also led companies like Target to stop selling said cards after dealing with too many aggressive customers. In 2022, The Pokémon Company set out to dampen card scarcity by printing over 9 billion new cards.
More IP exploitation of video game properties
We’ve noted that in the last couple of years traditional entertainment companies have taken a renewed interest in producing shows and films based on video game IP. An unscripted Pokémon Trading Card Game series would be a new direction for the Pokémon brand, which has already dominated the fields of animation and saw success with the live-action adaptation of Pokémon: Detective Pikachu.
The world of unscripted television is fairly untrod territory for video game brands, with the exception of documentaries following the world of esports.
The Pokémon Company is in a fairly unique position compared to other game industry brands, since the success of the Trading Card Game has been its own titanic phenomenon independent of the video games’ success. But that doesn’t mean other studios and publishers wouldn’t want a piece of the unscripted television market.
A director competitor would be Konami and the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, but one wonders if EA would want to finagle something similar out of the world of EA Sports FC (formerly known as the FIFA game series).