While doing some more press for
The Strain, Guillermo del Toro chatted with
Collider chatted with the director about
Pacific Rim 2 and
Pacific Rim the animated series. During the discussion del Toro revealed that he'll begin prepping the
Pacific Rim sequel in August. The original film grossed over $400M at the worldwide box office, but carried with it a hefty budget. How much of a profit it cleared it still up for debate. Then there is the animated series, which del Toro formally announced several weeks ago. Guillermo tells
Collider, he is negotiating with Japanese companies for the animation and is still in the process of selecting showrunners and putting together a writer's room. Characters from the first film will make cameos in the animated series and fans should expect new jaegers as well as new kaijus.
“We’re going for a long arc, so the idea is to show a group of characters—we have pilots, functional jaegers, but we have all these younger characters. I really want to explore things that are complimentary to the things that I want to explore in the second movie: drift, what drifting does to you, what is needed to drift, a lot of stuff that I think is important, but also the jaeger technology, the kaijus being evolved, ideas about the precursors—the guys that control the kaijus. We have a lot of leeway in 13 episodes and I wanna make it sort of in the same spirit of Pacific Rim, which is the ideal audience for Pacific Rim was young—very young, 11-year-olds and so forth—but with really beautiful design and stories that make these characters interesting in a way that I found them interesting in, for example, Year Zero, the graphic novel that we did. And I think that’s the basic thrust of the thing.”
“If it connects we’ll go on [to more seasons], but the thing is I don’t want it to be weekly adventures. I don’t want it to be like Chapter One is a little action thing and it gets resolved in 40 minutes or an hour and then the next episode, [it’s like] nothing happened. My favorite anime series always have a long arc.” - Guillermo del Toro
PACIFIC RIM 2 Will Land In Theaters April 7, 2017
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!