The hearts of those who were desperate for more giant robot vs. giant monster mayhem leapt with delight last week when Guillermo del Toro officially confirmed that the Pacific Rim sequel is in solid development and will be out in 2017. The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog tracked him down to pry out a few more details about the sequel and his ongoing hopes of resurrecting the dream project based on H.P. Lovecraft’s **At The Mountains Of Madness.
Talking about the potential alleyways offered by Pacific Rim 2, del Toro said that while a lot of the original film’s characters will be back, the story he’s been developing with Travis Beacham and in particular Zak Penn will be different. “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. It was hard to create a world that did not come from a comic book and 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. And 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.”
Shrugging off attempts to compare the Rim films to Gareth Edwards' recent Godzilla by highlighting their different approaches to the monster spectacle, del Toro also mentions what he’s looking to do with the characters. “I’m hoping to bring the same idea I had in the first movie, that was to make it multicultural and humanistic as much as possible, to make characters from many nationalities or gender, to make them equal in the scope of the adventure, in the day-to-day of the adventure. So, we’re bringing a few characters that are new and hopefully doing good work managing those that survived the first movie!”
With that 2017 release date still far enough in the future, the busy writer / director / producer has time to work on the look of the film properly. He’ll take a full nine months, starting in August, to design everything the sequel needs.
As for Mountains, he remains hopeful that Legendary – which now has a distribution deal with Universal, where the film almost got made a few years ago – will help birth the horror at long last.
“That’s exactly what I discussed with them. I said to them, ‘that’s the movie that I would really love to do one day,’ and it’s still expensive. I think that now, with the way I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with Legendary, to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic. There are basically one or two scenes in the book that people don’t remember that are pretty graphic. Namely, for example, the human autopsy that the aliens do, which is a very shocking moment. But I think I can find ways of doing it. We’ll see. It’s certainly a possibility in the future. Legendary was very close to doing it at one point, so I know they love the screenplay. So, we’ll see. Hopefully it’ll happen. It’s certainly one of the movies I would love to do.”
Fingers and tentacles crossed for Mountains, then. For more from GDT, head to the WSJ’s page.
The next full del Toro project, haunted house horror Crimson Peak, is chugging through post-production now and will arrive on October 16 next year.