Buzzfeed recently chatted with director Guillermo del Toro about his upcoming television series The Strain, which will premiere on FX. During their discussion Buzzfeed asked him about the possibility of another Pacific Rim film. “I’m working very, very hard with Zak Penn ("The Incredible Hulk"),” he told Buzzfeed. “We’ve been working for a few months now in secret. We found a way to twist it around. Travis Beacham [co-writer of the first film, now working on Fox’s Hieroglyph] was involved in the storyline and now I’m writing with Zak because Travis has become a TV mogul.”
At this time, Legendary Pictures has not given Pacific Rim 2 the greenlight. In March, Legendary CEO Thomas Tull told Collider, "It did north of 400 million dollars globally and both the home video sales and the merchandise have way over-indexed, so it seems like fans really loved the world. So we’re going to sit down with Guillermo and as long as we think it’s authentic and there’s something to say, we’re certainly open to it."
As for the script, del Toro revealed that Jaeger pilots, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), are involved in the storyline. Clearly, that means it is a sequel and not a prequel as many had speculated it might be. “Some people were wondering if we were going to do the prequel. I was never interested in doing that first wave of invasion,” del Toro said. He concluded with this spirited message about Pacific Rim 2: “I’m going for very new, very crazy ideas on the second one, which are very different from the first one — but you will get really great spectacle.”
PACIFIC RIM SYNOPSIS - When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity’s resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju. On the verge of defeat, the forces defending mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes-a washed up former pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested trainee (Rinko Kikuchi)-who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the past. Together, they stand as mankind’s last hope against the mounting apocalypse.
Pacific Rim was directed by Guillermo del Toro, from a script written by Travis Beacham. The cast includes Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Max Martini, Robert Kazinsky, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman, Larry Joe Campbell, Diego Klattenhoff, and Brad William Henke. Now available on DVD & Blu-ray!