Pacific Rim 2: Del Toro Reveals ‘Gigantic’ Details

Pacific Rim 2.

Guillermo del Toro has been working on the script for about a year and a half, and finally, after much speculation, the 49-year-old director of Hell Boy, Pan’s Labyrinth, and of course, Pacific Rim, gratified fanboys everywhere last week when he announced that the Pacific Rim sequel would actually happen. In addition, Guillermo announced a Pacific Rim animated series, as well as an ongoing Pacific Rim comic book.

Now, in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, del Toro gives the world some great new information on his Kaiju-sized sequel.

“Screenwriter Zak Penn and I really went in, we started with Travis Beacham about a year and a half ago, kicking ideas back and forth. And, admittedly, I said to Zak, let’s keep kicking ideas till we find one that really, really turns the first movie on its ear, so to speak.”

Del Toro went on to speak about how events and elements from the first Pacific Rim film spurned their imagination and ideas about what the second Pacific Rim might entail.

“Then there was this portal that ripped a hole into the fabric of our universe, what were the tools they were using? And we came up with a really, really interesting idea. I don’t want to spoill it, but I think at the end of the second movie, people will find out that the two movies stand on their own. They’re very different from each other, although hopefully bringing the same joyful giant spectacle. But the tenor of the two movies will be quite different.”

In addition to the new Pacific Rim film, del Toro also announced a Pacific Rim animated series. No network has been chosen yet, but del Toro revealed that many of the stories surrounding it would involve pilots working in the building where the jaegers are built – called the Shatterdome – in addition to pilot cadets in training.

The animated series will all take place sequentially before the first Pacific Rim film. It will introduce and flesh out a number of characters that will play an important role in the second Pacific Rim film, del Toro said. In addition to the animated series, a comic book spawned from a graphic novel called Tales from Year Zero will have about three years worth of print editions out before the second Pacific Rim film hits theaters.

Del Toro said in the interview that he wants all these things, the films, the series, the comics, to all be under one large Pacific Rim mythos.

“…so we are trying for all these things to be canon, to be in the same universe, to not wing anything, so that if anyone… a lot of kids, for example, have discovered Pacific Rim through the toys. They come in through the toys, and then they watch the movie, and then they learn this, they learn that through the movie or the comic book series, so we’re trying to make it canon so we can expand the universe.”

Suffice to say, it sounds like fans of Pacific Rim are going to have a ton of material to ingest over the next few years, before Pacific Rim 2 is even released in theaters!