Marketing: Ryan Reynolds

The movie's distributors ensured to make some capital out of the well-established fandom of the actors involved as well.

Warner Bros. has itself offered Ryan Reynolds the central focus of the campaign, because of his bold personality and popularity among the audiences as being the Deadpool protagonist, using the actor’s personal YouTube and other social media profiles as the platforms on which to launch various commercials, artwork and other materials.

Reynolds has shared several clips that are engaging, funny, and paid dividends for the Detective campaign. Using his 1.1M YouTube subscribers, Reynolds has shared homemade clips and official trailers, too.

A day prior to the second trailer's release, Ryan Reynolds uploaded a video onto his YouTube channel that features interviews with himself and his wife, Blake Lively; https://youtu.be/V3_LgIDqOwo

Along with some teaser trailer he also uploaded promotional videos. On April 10, 2019, he uploaded a video titled, 'Casting Detective Pikachu', showcasing the Pokémon that were to be seen in the final cut of the movie; https://youtu.be/198gzllaumo The same video was also uploaded on the Warner Bros. Pictures - Denmark channel.

On May 2 2019, Reynolds uploaded another promotional video titles as, 'Get Ready with Me (Pika Edition)' https://youtu.be/4RXdusySjsk

His social media fandom consisted of 52.9M Facebook Fans, 59.3M Facebook video views, 37.9M Twitter followers, 419.1M YouTube views, and 56.2M Instagram followers.

Pikachu excelled at all levels in his fandom on every social media platform, with a high viral rate for its video materials of 32:1.

One of the biggest pops on YouTube on the Detective Pikachu official channel was this clip, which made it look like it was the pirated version of the film, when it was actually a joke. It’s a long, looped clip of Pikachu dancing. It even has a reference in the top right corner to 'R. Reynolds', as if the star’s team might have leaked the clip. The video received 4.2 million views in less than a day. https://youtu.be/tAA_yWX8ycQ

Reynolds also helped promote Pikachu with the biggest pushes in Japan and China. On April 25, a premiere was held in Tokyo with Reynolds alongside Letterman and stars Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton and Ken Watanabe. Also, in April, Reynolds, Smith, Letterman and Newton gathered for fans in Beijing with Chinese actor Lei Jiayin, who voices the titular character in the local version.