I spoke to director Guillermo del Toro today about his upcoming gothic horror film Crimson Peak (more on that soon!), but we also talked about the status of his Pacific Rim sequel during our chat. Despite recent reports that Pacific Rim 2 (also known as Pacific Rim: Maelstrom) has been delayed and possibly shelved , GDT says that the film is still moving ahead.

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“It's not cancelled,” he told me of the giant mecha versus monsters film. “I'm gonna do a little movie in between, if [the studio] deem[s] to approve it. But in the meantime we're turning in a budget and a script in three weeks [on Pacific Rim 2]. So it's still active. I still have my producer working on the budget and I still have the writer working on the script.”This tracks with a report also coming out of EW today. Word had previously indicated that Pac Rim 2 would begin production this November in Toronto for an August 4, 2017, release. But now that the film is delayed, it seems likely that release date will also have to be moved if the sequel does eventually go into production.While I had him, I also had to ask del Toro about Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island, which we learned recently will be sharing the same universe now that Legendary Pictures has both franchises at Warner Bros. Since Pac Rim is also set up at Legendary and Warners, and deals with, you know, giant monsters, it would seem a natural fit. But del Toro isn’t really feeling it.“I don't know where that [talk] came from,” he laughed. “And I really don't think it can. I mean, they can do whatever they want -- it's their universe, they own the property. But I don't see how they can. I don't see them mashing together. People say, somebody said, 'Would you like it?' I said, 'Yeah, it would be cool.' But I was not really proposing something definitely!”

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