Just last week, director Guillermo del Toro and Legendary Pictures blew our drifting minds when they announced the much-rumored sequel Pacific Rim 2 had already secured a release date of April 7, 2017. It’s a date that’s far enough in the future that one might presume del Toro & co. would take a while to jump into the pre-production process. That’s hardly the case, though, as the filmmaker will begin the design stage for the sequel in just six weeks, and he says the two films are “very different” from one another. In fact, he says the title this time will be pronounced God-zil-la. (Kidding.)

Talking with The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy, del Toro shared some his plans for Pacific Rim 2, and he predictably kept the information pretty light, but still shared a few interesting facts. Saying he and co-screenwriter Zak Penn wanted a story that would turn the first movie on its ear, he draws a contrasting line, as the “tenor of the two movies will be quite different.”

Dammit if we don’t love an underdog. We spent months slavering over the oncoming release of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, and once it was arrived, it was just as much fun as we’d hoped. It was a serious bummer, then, when it under-performed here in the States — to date, it’s only earned $101 million domestic, against a $190 million budget. Thankfully the rest of the world rode to the rescue, driving the global tally up to $411 million. It was still anybody’s guess whether a sequel would ever happen, even as positive and enthusiastic as del Toro remained about the possibility. Well, we shall speak in noncommital language no more: Pacific Rim 2 is real, it’s happening, and it’s hitting theaters on April 7, 2017.

Del Toro broke the news in the short video up top, and it’s been confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, which also adds that Pacific Rim 2 is being shot for 3D and IMAX — and this is one of those franchises that actually deserves that sort of epic, biggest-screen-possible approach.

Godzilla conquered the box office a few weeks ago, bringing in $93.2 million in its opening weekend. It also marked the second giant creature feature to storm theaters in the past 12 months, with the first invasion mounted by Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim. Godzilla’s box office stomping guaranteed a sequel (or several) from director Gareth Edwards, but what about that Pacific Rim sequel or prequel that people were speculating about last year? Well, it hasn’t officially been given the green light yet, but del Toro has confirmed that he is currently writing the script for Pacific Rim 2.

The first Pacific Rim suffered the same fate as this weekend’s Edge of Tomorrow, a hugely entertaining film that suffered from a confused marketing campaign that just couldn’t figure out how to get people into theaters. Pacific Rim earned only $101 million domestically, against a production budget of $190 million. Thankfully, it did well overseas, bringing its global box office up to $411 million. That still wasn’t enough to make more Pacific Rim a sure thing, but del Toro has sounded optimistic about its chances from the start. While out promoting his new FX horror series The Strain, he confirmed that he is “proceeding like it is happening,” and that he’s currently collaborating on a screenplay with Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk, Syfy’s Alphas).

With the release of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, this was one of the biggest weekend of the year for everyone at Giant Freakin’ Robot. There are plenty more science fiction movies filling out the rest of the year, but I seriously doubt anything else will match that flick’s Earthbound scale, at least in theaters. The video above does a pretty good job of teasing with a “Godzilla vs. Jaeger” future would look like if the King of the Monsters ever entered into the fictional sphere of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, or vice versa.

It seems like the world should have been full of Godzilla and Pacific Rim mash-ups, given how much conversation involved potential future crossovers. (Hell, maybe a ton of them do exist and I just couldn’t be bothered.) In any case, this MovieClips original is pretty much the epitome of what a multi-giant film should look like. Bryan Cranston. Idris Elba. Godzilla. Giant robots. CITIES DESTROYED! There should be a cinema out there somewhere that just plays these two movies back to back, 24 hours a day, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It’s been a few weeks since Cross the Streams reared its handsome, chiseled face to the world, but we promise it’s only gotten more attractive. That is, if you find seven noses and LED light sockets for eyes attractive. Luckily, we’ve got content of all kinds here, including monsters, cartoons, and slightly insightful documentative stuff. One could ask for more, but questions like that are total crap.

We’re trying to shape up the feature this week by top-loading it with the newer films and shows, while ending on the more classic (or completely forgettable) material of yesteryear, as well as rounding up releases we’ve talked about before that might have shown up on a different streaming site. Nuff ‘splaining. More streaming.

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Pacific Rim (HBOGo)
One of the biggest movies of last summer is now one of the biggest movies on HBOGo. Also one of the most woodenly acted, but we don’t mind when the humans fail so long as the giant freakin’ robots do some major damage. And that they do in Guillermo del Toro’s CGI-laden blockbuster. (Not that its profits were as big as its monsters, but still.) It cancelled the apocalypse with Charlie Hunnam and Idris Elba going into mind-melding mode to power their hilariously named Jaegars into city and water to take on the Kaiju that have risen from beneath the ocean. Yadda, yadda, yadda, oil tanker swung like a baseball bat. Pacific Rim is an ass-stomping good time, though it could have used more Charlie Day and Ron Perlman to break up all the robotic dialogue.

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.