Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in the fall of 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo's first theatrical bet on the franchise's American crossover, following its explosive rise from Game Boy cartridges to a Saturday morning phenomenon. Directed by Kunihiko Yuyama and built around the clash between Mewtwo and Mew, it became a box office event, proving that the Pokémon brand could fill theaters as easily as it filled toy aisles. For a generation of kids, it was their first experience of the franchise on the big screen, cementing 1999 as the year Pokémon became a household name well beyond Japan.
This 35mm cell carries the film's own name, the kind of piece that once ran through a projector as the picture introduced itself to an audience before a single scene unfolded. Collectors prize these frames for their plainness and their history, a single strip that marks the exact moment the movie declared what it was. As a title cell, it stands apart from character or scene pieces, valued instead for its role as threshold, the frame audiences saw right before Pikachu, Mewtwo, and the rest of the story began.
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.
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