Pacific Rim 2 is officially a “go”. Though director Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 “monsters vs. robots” film was in no way a box office disaster, the colorful, bombastic epic failed to catch on with general audiences in Transformers fashion. It just squeaked past the $100 million mark stateside, but fared much better internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $411 million. Fans (myself included) hoped this would be enough to convince Legendary Pictures to greenlight a sequel, and we’ve been hearing more updates on the follow-up in the past few months.

Most recently, del Toro revealed that he’s writing the Pacific Rim 2 script with Zak Penn (X2), and now the filmmaker has announced that the pic will hit theaters on April 7, 2017 in IMAX 3D. Moreover, he revealed that an animated series set within the Pacific Rim world will be unveiled sometime before that date. More after the jump.

Universal Pictures made the release date announcement this evening, as the studio will be taking over distribution duties from Warner Bros. following Legendary’s split last year. It appears that WB willingly let the franchise go, as they had the first option on the sequel. Additionally, it was announced that del Toro will indeed be returning to the director’s chair for Pacific Rim 2, so we’ve got plenty more inventive kaiju vs. robot action on the way. The April date is a shift from Pacific Rim‘s July release, but I’m hopeful that it will fare better earlier in the year, when audiences haven’t yet suffered from box office fatigue.

Pacific Rim screenwriter Travis Beacham will also be contributing to the script, though in a more limited capacity since he’s busy running the upcoming TV series Hieroglyph. Del Toro is currently in post-production on his first “adult” film in the English language, Crimson Peak, but the 2017 date gives him plenty of time to complete that picture and move back into the Pacific Rim world.

And if that wasn’t enough, del Toro revealed that fans will be treated to more Pacific Rim goodness before the sequel, saying they’ll be developing a new Pacific Rim animated series and continuing the comic book series that began with Year Zero, written by Travis Beacham. Exciting stuff, yeah? Sound off with your thoughts in the comments, and watch del Toro make the announcement in the video below.