Pacific Rim Sequel Still A Very Real Possibility
Never bet against giant mechs and monsters.
This article is more than 2 years old
Though it’s totally awesome and one of my favorite movies of 2013, Guillermo Del Toro’s mechs versus monsters adventure Pacific Rim didn’t connect with American audiences like the studio hoped. Thus, the prospects of a sequel seemed dim at best. Still, the movie did manage to rake in $411 million dollars world wide and received generally favorable reviews from critics. With all of the Godzilla on the horizon, people still seem hungry for giant monsters—Machinima just launched their creature-centric web series Enormous—so with all of these plusses, a sequel is apparently a very real possibility.
Shock Til You Drop recently caught up with Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull and the topic of Pacific Rim 2 was definitely broached. Here’s what the executive had to say on the matter:
I was literally just with Guillermo on the set of Crimson Peak…We talk about it and have some pretty great ideas. If they come to fruition and we get a great script, then we’re open to it. Fans seem pretty passionate about it and working with Guillermo. So, we’re open to it.
That sounds promising indeed. Del Toro has been talking about the possibility of making a sequel even since before the first film opened last summer. We’ve even heard that he is working on a script, which could be a prequel. And both he and Godzilla helmer Gareth Edwards have touched on the topic of an eventual Godzilla/Pacific Rim crossover, which would be a thing to see.
Such a meeting isn’t too hard to imagine. Pacific Rim is set in the future, where monsters called Kaiju emerge from an interdimensional rift at the bottom of the ocean and lay waste to major cities. To combat this menace, humans create massive mech suits called Jaegers. Godzilla is set in the present day, and also involves a giant monster emerging from the depths to cause problems. Could he be the first Kaiju, the one that people have to battle without the aid of the Jaegers? It’s one possibility.
While a Pacific Rim sequel is by no means guaranteed, the signs definitely look promising. It fits all of the criteria for movies that usually get sequels—money, critical acclaim, a filmmaker who is passionate about the title, and a studio that is open to the possibility—so it at least appears to have a puncher’s chance.
As Tull notes, Del Toro is currently working on the thriller Crimson Peak. He’s also attached to a modern Pinocchio update, not to mention the seemingly dozens of other projects he’s always attached to in one form or another (one day we’ll see his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness). The man is busy, so we’ll have to give this a wait and see approach, but damn if we’re not interested in Pacific Rim 2.
