Guillermo Del Toro Isn’t Worried About Silly Rumors That Pacific Rim May Fail
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I hope I’m not going out on a robotic limb by assuming that anyone reading this is doing so because they’re interested in seeing Pacific Rim when it comes out, and that there aren’t any corporate spies who will haunt the comment section trying to sway people to go and see what will most certainly be the most abysmal film of the summer: Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2, which opens the same weekend. In fact, I’d hope that you guys would be the kind of people who would rip the Grown Ups 2 posters down and wrap them around your shoes, so that all the “robot vs. monster”-inspired splooge all over the theater floors doesn’t seep into your shoes. Pacific Rim is going to be amazing because Guillermo del Toro doesn’t do un-amazing movies. GFR doesn’t need to be sold on it.
But much of America might, if you believe in highly questionable early tracking numbers, which showed up in a story in Variety and got the Internet laying false doom upon Pacific Rim‘s doorstep. (To be fair, we covered that story too. But so what?) Not one to let such drivel go unrebuked, del Toro took to the forums of fansite DelToroFilms.com to tell fans not to worry about senseless chatter.
Del Toro writes:
We just need to keep working. Our numbers are going up. Not in a minor way. Significant. We are on the right track…We are working on it. We concentrated on the core for a long time — but we are barely started on the campaign. I am seeing the ads now and I am seeing outdoors and we are now supplementing what we did with character or tone. Thank you all for your good faith and love.
Sounds like a guy who’s real nervous, right? Not a bit. Even if this movie doesn’t make back the $200 million budget in the U.S., it will be a glutton for overseas earnings. The main reason anybody is worried about the money it will make is because Legendary Pictures, whose deal with Warner Bros. just ended, fronted most of the bill, and part of their future may depend on it. Del Toro doesn’t need to defend Legendary Pictures. He’s just letting his fans know that they don’t have anything to worry about. Except giant-ass monsters and all.
Need more proof? Del Toro doesn’t even need to refer to Grown Ups 2 by name. “Whatever sequel opens will have, by definition, higher awareness and numbers across the board, but we are moving in the right direction,” he said. I know he means any sequel opening at any time, but he probably said it while taking a shit on a picture of Kevin James.
Anybody who writes the headline “Is Pacific Rim Doomed to be This Year’s Battleship?” might just be stupid enough to have written Battleship. (Just kidding. Variety is super cool!) Join me in watching Pacific Rim in theaters on July 12. Bring your robot buddies. They get in free!
