While Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim didn’t quite live up to box office expectations here in the US, the film raked in more than three times its domestic total in foreign markets, prompting Legendary Pictures to greenlight a sequel for a 2017 release. Del Toro has been keeping himself busy with his work on FX’s The Strain and his upcoming horror flick, Crimson Peak, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten about Pacific Rim 2.
In a recent chat with Collider to promote The Book of Life, he offered an update on the status of the film:
“We got the first draft of the movie now, and we are going to spend another 4-5 months on the screenplay before we start pre-production. We start pre-production next year in August-September and start shooting November-December next year.”
But Del Toro doesn’t plan to stop there. A Pacific Rim animated series has already been announced, which is expected to bridge the gap between the original film and the sequel, and Del Toro is already setting his sights on a third entry into the franchise:
“Some of your favorite characters come back, some others don’t because we have decided that we’re going to shoot ambitiously and say ‘Let’s hope we have three movies,’ so some characters come in at the end of the second, hoping that it will ramp up on the third one.”
Del Toro also promises that Pacific Rim 2 will offer “a very different experience from the first one.” While he didn’t go into any details regarding the plot or which characters would return, we’re crossing out fingers that we’ll see more of Ron Perlman’s Hannibal Chau. Pacific Rim 2 will open on April 7, 2017.
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