Strap into your jaegers: we may be getting a whole lot more Pacific Rim content if the director of the upcoming sequel has anything to say about it. At New York Comic Con, filmmaker Steven S. DeKnight – who inherited the director’s chair from Guillermo del Toro – referred to the “Pacific Rim franchise,” and in a new interview, he explained the plan to expand this robots vs. kaiju franchise into something comparable to Star Wars and Star Trek.



Nerdist caught up with DeKnight at New York Comic Con and asked him if his use of the word “franchise” during the panel means that a Pacific Rim universe – in the form of more movies, comics, and entertainment in other media – is in the cards:

“I’m certainly hoping so. I think you’ll definitely probably get more comics. The plan was always to use this movie as a launching pad. If enough people show up to this, we’ve already talked about the plot of the third movie, and how the end of the third movie would expand the universe to a Star Wars/Star Trek-style [franchise] where you can go in many, many different directions. You can go main canon, you can go spin-offs, you can go one-offs. Yeah, that’s the plan. And I would love to see an animated TV show based on this.”

While fans may be excited about the potential for more PacRim stories in various forms, it’s important to remember that the key phrase in DeKnight’s response is, “If enough people show up to this”. The first Pacific Rim barely cleared $100 million domestically in its theatrical run, and it was the international reception that ultimately justified a sequel. But while studios used to be able to just dump sequels into theaters and bank on international audiences to eat them up because of name recognition and big CG spectacle, this summer may be something of a turning point in that regard: movies like Pirates 5 and Transformers 5 didn’t perform nearly as well as anticipated, and with Uprising’s iffy trailer that doesn’t seem to capture the del Toro-led uniqueness of the 2013 original, this sequel’s success is far from a sure thing.

We’ve already seen Pacific Rim comics and a fan-made anime, but there actually were plans in place for an official animated Pacific Rim cartoon series a few years ago under del Toro’s supervision, but it ended up being put on hold. The filmmaker is still hopeful that he’ll be able to make it one day, but just like with the rest of this content, you have to assume its future is closely tied with the success or failure of Uprising.

You can read our full recap of the NYCC Pacific Rim Uprising panel right here. Uprising arrives in theaters on February 23, 2018.