Home Entertainment Daredevil's Steven S. DeKnight to direct PACIFIC RIM 2!

Daredevil's Steven S. DeKnight to direct PACIFIC RIM 2!

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Pacific Rim (12)

While I may love the works of filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, his name attached to a project never actually fills me with confidence. That’s because the Mexican director has a habit of attaching to really awesome sounding movies and then ditching them later again. But when it came to Pacific Rim 2, the sequel to his fan-favourtie 2013 giant mech vs giant monster throwdown, Del Toro seemed especially committed to getting it made despite just a not-bad box office reception and seeming initial reluctance from studio Legendary Pictures.

Well, the good news is that Pacific Rim 2 is now finally officially happening (again!) (we promise this time!), and the also-good news is that Del Toro won’t be directing so no need to get disappointed later when he drops out! What? You know it would have happened!

Taking over from Del Toro behind the camera will be Daredevil exec producer/lead writer and Spartacus creator Steven S. DeKnight who will be making his feature film directing debut with Pacific Rim 2. DeKnight also did plenty of work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Smallville, so his geek credentials are certainly more than enough for the job, though I have to admit that I’ve never seen him show off the type of incredible visual imagination that Del Toro brings to the table, and which made the original Pacific Rim so fun to watch.

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During the “will they/won’t they” phase for the last two or years or, it was stated at some point that Pacific Rim 2 would be scheduled for a 2017 release, and with a confirmed director now they could still hit that target. Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Doctor Strange) is penning the script, though it’s uncertain how far along he is. As for what that script would be about though, Del Toro spoke a bit about it last year:

“It’s a few years after the first one.  It’s not an immediate follow-up.  It is the world having been freed of Kaiju, what happens to the world after – what happens to the Jaeger technology once the Kaiju are not a threat.  It’s quite a jump.”

“It’s quite a different movie from the first one… You’re gonna get a lot of [crazy science], but the Kaijus are very different and you’re gonna see a very different type of the robots I think.  It’s gonna be quite a different adventure.”

“It was hard to create a world that did not come from a comic book, that had its own mythology, so we had to sacrifice many aspects to be able to cram everything in the first movie.

Namely, for example “the Drift”, which was an interesting concept. [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 spoil 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.”

Pacific Rim had a hefty $190 million price tag which nearly sunk its sequel hopes completely as it only $101 million domestically, but thanks to a $114 million in China boosting its international figures to $310 million, it can now live on to fight Kaiju another day.

Last Updated: February 24, 2016

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