Guillermo Del Toro recently spoke to Collider, offering an update on the very much in development PACIFIC RIM 2. Nothing hugely revelatory came from the conversation, but nonetheless there were a few fun morsels to chew on:
Regarding which characters may or may not come back, Del Toro reveals…
“...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.”
…suggesting the second film will head towards a cliffhanger of some sort. Del Toro also reiterates his (previously mentioned) characterization that PR2 will be “…a very different experience from the first one."
I really like that last quote - I’m not a believer in sequels aping their progenitors. The ALIEN films did it right, in principle at least. If you’ve never seen the ‘assembly cut’ / workprint version of ALIEN 3 which appears on the home video releases, by the way, considering checking it out. It’s a substantial improvement over the theatrical issuance, and is rather eye opening.
Back to PR…
Collider indicates that pre-production on the second PACIFIC RIM will begin August/September 2015, with an eye towards shooting at the end of the year.
Interestingly, no reference was made to the also-in-development PACIFIC RIM animates series, which is said to very much inform the PAC RIM universe on the whole, and may play a part in shaping what we see on screen in this sequel/these sequels. I guess we’ll hear about that another time…
The PACIFIC RIM sequel will arrive on screens April 2017.
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Glen Oliver
“Merrick”
