The worldwide phenomenon of Pokémon encompasses the fastest-selling Game Boy game as well as the #1 rated TV show on Kids WB! along with best-selling books, music and videos. The phenomenon continues to spill over into sales of licensed merchandise, including a best-selling toy line and a hugely popular card game seen in notebooks of kids all across America. Fan excitement thrives on the Internet - web sites, official and otherwise, proliferate. Pokémon" is the sixth most-searched-for word on the Internet.

Now, "Pokémon: The First Movie" brings the Pokémon experience to American movie screens for the first time.

Originally animated in Japan, Pokémon: The First Movie" had to be virtually reimagined for American audiences. Nintendo, which owns all rights to Pokémon in America, brought 4Kids Entertainment on board to handle all the creative aspects of essentially "Americanizing" the movie.

4Kids Entertainment's Norman Grossfeld, along with Michael Haigney and John Touhey, dramatically rewrote the script, incorporating all-new story elements. Grossfeld explains, "Our first challenge was to rewrite the film and dub the new script over the footage. We also rescored the entire movie with all new music that would better reflect what American kids would respond to."

The all-new musical score was produced by John Loeffler for Rave Music. Loeffler composed the score with Ralph Schuckett. John Lissauer and Manny Corallo collaborated with Loeffler on the score for the short "Pikachu's Vacation." The soundtrack for "Pokémon The First Movie" will feature a soon-to-be-announced line-up of some of the hottest-selling young recording artists of 1999, including M2M.

With time available to fine-tune, Shogakukan Production Co., Ltd. digitally enhanced the backgrounds exclusively for the American release to give the story a more striking and dramatic presentation.

Additionally, the filmmakers worked to translate everything on the screen to English, from signs on buildings to street names, to ensure that American moviegoers would not miss out on any part of the Pokémon experience.

"The resulting film," continues Grossfeld, "combines the visual sense of the best Japanese animation with the musical sensibility of Western pop culture."

The Pokémon phenomenon began in Japan in 1996, with Nintendo inciting a national craze when it introduced software for its Game Boy portable video game system called "Pocket Monsters." Created by the young award-winning game software designers Satoshi Tajiri and Tsunekazu Ishihara, the game quickly rose to the top of the highly competitive Japanese game market.

The interactive, role-playing game of Pokémon (its officially shortened name) offered young players (called "trainers") a chance to capture an ever-increasing number of collectible species (now officially 151 with Mew) and engage in Pokémon battles with other trainers. The trainer's goal is to increase his status through battles with other trainers until he earns the ultimate badge of honor by becoming "The World's Greatest Pokémon Master."