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National Film Vault

OFFICIAL FILM AUTHENTICATION BY CROWN GRADING
A
AUTHENTIC
CROWN CERTIFIED
Film cell NFV-000000022 Tap to enlarge
MOVIEPokemon: The First Movie Trailer
SCENESnorlax
FILM FORMAT35MM
YEAR1999
CERTIFICATE IDNFV-000000022
Film Record Public record
Directed by
Kunihiko Yuyama
Studio
OLM, Inc. · 75 min
Honors
Animation Kobe Theatrical Film Award — 1 winKids' Choice Award — 1 nomination
All 1 wins · 1 nominations on record
  • Animation Kobe Theatrical Film Award: Animation Kobe Theatrical Film Award
Scholarship
Named in the title of 1 peer-reviewed work
Examples
Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.

FILM NOTES

Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo brought the franchise's television momentum into theaters, pairing "Mewtwo Strikes Back" with the short "Pikachu's Vacation." It became a cultural event of that era's Pokémon boom, drawing families and young fans in record numbers and cementing the franchise's place in American pop culture. Its box office success proved that a television-born property could command a genuine theatrical audience, and the film remains a touchstone for collectors of late-1990s animation and merchandising history.

This 35MM cell carries the name Snorlax, one of the franchise's most recognizable and beloved Pokémon, prized by collectors for its instant recognizability and enduring popularity across generations of fans. A cell bearing this name preserves a single frame from the physical film print, a tangible artifact of the animation process itself, connecting directly to the movie's theatrical run. For collectors, such a piece represents both a piece of cinema history and a piece of Pokémon's early cultural footprint, valued simply for what it names and where it came from.

This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
CROWN SERIAL 000059332