By David Wharton | 6 years ago

Godzilla conquered the box office a few weeks ago, bringing in $93.2 million in its opening weekend. It also marked the second giant creature feature to storm theaters in the past 12 months, with the first invasion mounted by Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim. Godzilla’s box office stomping guaranteed a sequel (or several) from director Gareth Edwards, but what about that Pacific Rim sequel or prequel that people were speculating about last year? Well, it hasn’t officially been given the green light yet, but del Toro has confirmed that he is currently writing the script for Pacific Rim 2.

The first Pacific Rim suffered the same fate as this weekend’s Edge of Tomorrow, a hugely entertaining film that suffered from a confused marketing campaign that just couldn’t figure out how to get people into theaters. Pacific Rim earned only $101 million domestically, against a production budget of $190 million. Thankfully, it did well overseas, bringing its global box office up to $411 million. That still wasn’t enough to make more Pacific Rim a sure thing, but del Toro has sounded optimistic about its chances from the start. While out promoting his new FX horror series The Strain, he confirmed that he is “proceeding like it is happening,” and that he’s currently collaborating on a screenplay with Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk, Syfy’s Alphas).

Del Toro told BuzzFeed:

I’m working very, very hard with Zak Penn. We’ve been working for a few months now in secret. We found a way to twist it around. Travis Beacham was involved in the storyline and now I’m writing with Zak because Travis has become a TV mogul.

Pacific Rim co-creator Travis Beacham is off working on his new TV series, the upcoming Fox historical fantasy Hieroglyph, which is due to premiere sometime in spring 2015. He also has the science fiction series Ballistic City in the works at AMC with Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski (at least we hope so; it’s been a while since we’ve heard any updates on the AMC series).

Del Toro also confirmed that both Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) are planned to return, and that the new script is set after the events of the first movie. That should be interesting, given how decisive the finale of the first Pacific Rim seemed to be. That also shoots down the long-standing rumors that the second Pacific Rim would actually be a prequel. In the interview, del Toro says, “I was never interested in doing that first wave of invasion. I’m going for very new, very crazy ideas on the second one, which are very different from the first one — but you will get really great spectacle.”

Del Toro has been talking about the possibility of Pacific Rim 2 since even before the release of the first one, previously saying he was working on a script with Beacham — before Hieroglyph sidelined him. As recently as this past March, Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull said that the company was still “open to” the possibility of another Pacific Rim film…which obviously isn’t the same thing as saying it’s a sure thing. Still, if anybody can make Pacific Rim 2 happen through sheer force of will, it’s Guillermo del Toro. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.