Spotify and Higher Ground’s podcast The Big Hit Show explores definitive moments in popular culture, with a model new season dedicated to the megalith that’s Pokémon. As the highest-grossing franchise of all time, there are plenty of fascinating nuggets of knowledge on the market, however this is likely one of the weirder ones.

Turns out an American studio thought-about Leonardo DiCaprio for the position of Ash Ketchum within the Pokémon film. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Pokémon connection may be a passing thought in some producer’s head, however what an odd thought it’s. What had been they basing it on? The approach he died within the sea so believably?

As Alex Pappademas says within the podcast: “In 1999, once the games, the cards and the TV series had become a phenomenon in the United States, the rights to release a US version of [the Japanese] movie became a hot property. And, not long after they sold the TV show, Norman Grossfeld and 4Kids were tapped to shop the movie around to American movie studios. One of those studios pitched Norman an unusual idea for the lead voice actor.”

4Kids’ Norman Grossfeld provides some extra context, claiming the studio stated “Hey, we really want this. We can make this work. We’re going to bring in Leonardo DiCaprio to play the voice of Ash. It’s going to get a lot of buzz, we’re going to have a lot and we’ll get all these celebrities. It’s going to be really big.”

You can take a look at the podcast right here, or, for one thing completely different, take a look at our Splatoon 3 preview.