Official details on Pacific Rim 2 at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con (where director Guillermo Del Toro was there promoting Crimson Peak) del Toro reaffirmed the filming start date for the Pacific Rimsequel – with a story that picks up a few years after the events of the first movie and focuses more on the mythology behind the Kaiju. Global News (hat tip BMD) is reporting that Pacific Rim 2 will begin shooting at Pinewood Toronto Studios in November 2015, under the working title Maelstrom.
It’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility that Pacific Rim 2 will end up being called Pacific Rim: Maelstrom or something along those lines, seeing as subtitles are very much in fashion for upcoming Hollywood sequels right now (for example, Independence Day: Resurgence) and Maelstrom seems appropriate for this particular franchise. However, much as the in-development Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) sequel won’t necessarily retain its working title (Half-Shell) as a subtitle, Pacific Rim 2might end up with a different subtitle (if any) altogether.
To be exact, the filmmaker previously said it’s going to be “quite a jump” from the first movie to the followup, where the Kaijus are no longer attacking Earth (and Jaeger technology is being used for different purposes). Once upon a time, del Toro was even considering making quirky scientist Newt (Charlie Day) an antagonist in the Pacific Rim sequel, though such plans may’ve been long abandoned by now.
The commercial success (or lack thereof) of Pacific Rim 2 will determine whether or not the franchise lives on for a third installment (same goes for a third Hellboy movie), though it sounds as though del Toro already has some ideas in mind for what Pacific Rim 3 would be about. Then again, if the Pacific Rim sequel is a box office success, then it seems del Toro’s pipe dream would be to finish another trilogy of his, before returning to the world of Kaijus and Jaegers a third time…
Pacific Rim 2 opens in cinemas August 2017, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.