Legendary Pictures CEO Talks Godzilla And Pacific Rim
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Pacific Rim and Godzilla could be two of the biggest releases of 2013 and 2014, respectively. In fact, if Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro had his druthers, the sea monsters and giant robots of his movie might cross paths with the big green Japanese lizard himself in a crossover movie. As it stands, both movies only share the same movie studio (Warner Bros.) and production company (Legendary Pictures).
In an interview with Collider, Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull talks about the two monster movies, and how Godzilla’s production is changing a movie’s relationship with its fans, while feeding into their enthusiasm. Here’s Tull:
We want to make sure that we’re connecting with our fan base. We want to make sure that you’re appropriately surprised and have something to look forward to when you go to see the movie… We want to connect, and in a world of social media and the outlets we have, we want to come up with all kinds of ways to have fans share the excitement and the experience as it builds towards launch.
With the recent bombardment of leaked location images and videos from Godzilla, some of which were provided by the film’s director, Gareth Edwards, it’s good to see that the Legendary people aren’t afraid to give fans a peek at their latest film before it stomps into theaters next year.
As for Pacific Rim, good word of mouth goes a long way, and Pacific Rim‘s word of mouth has been stellar. Legendary Pictures and Guillermo del Toro recently previewed Pacific Rim for test audiences in Southern California, and the film received mostly positive and enthusiastic responses. Tull is obviously excited about Pacific Rim’s potential, and addresses the subject of audience expectations below:
…its gets thrown around way too much in our business that ‘you’ve never seen this before. This is something completely different.’ And that’s the other side of things, audiences are constantly online and so forth talking about how Hollywood just recycles things and there’s truth to that, but audiences keep rewarding those things by going to them. So I think what I’m excited about is this is something different on a size and scale you haven’t seen before, and Guillermo del Toro is truly a genius. I’m in love with the movie and I cannot wait until people get a chance to see it.
If both films are successful, and since Tull believes Guillermo del Toro is a genius, maybe that Pacific Rim/Godzilla crossover isn’t just a pipe dream after all…
Pacific Rim will hit theaters everywhere on July 12th, in 3D and IMAX, while Godzilla will stomp into theaters on May 16, 2014.
