Not everyone was into Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim. Or as one female friend of mine once said, “this is such a boy movie.” That said, it was a fairly original, large-scale movie that brought to life a world of giant robots and giant monsters, something we don’t always see done well (see: the Transformers movies). So while it was undoubtedly skewed for a particular demographic (I’d go as far as to call it a “nerd movie”), it was pretty well received.
The good will earned with the first film has fueled the online conversation over a sequel, which up until today was something that seemed to be in the worked. In a piece detailing some offscreen disfunction between Universal Pictures and Warner Bros., The Hollywood Reporter said that while del Toro was gearing up to begin shooting Pacific Rim 2 in November, the production has now been delayed indefinitely. It’s being inferred that “indefinitely” means more than just pushed back. It means cancelled altogether.
The sticking point for a Pacific Rim sequel was always going to be profitability. While the first film made $441 million worldwide, it’s production cost was in the range of $190 million. When compared to other big tentpole films, like Universal’s Jurassic World, which made over $690 million worldwide on a budget of $150 million, it’s easy to see how a company might get a little skittish about a sequel.
The plans for the sequel (and an eventual third film) had been in the works for del Toro and screenwriters Travis Beacham and Zak Penn since before the first movie was released. And while it didn’t perform well domestically, it was said that Pacific Rim‘s huge box office take in China was a strong reason why its production company, Legendary Pictures, was behind a sequel.
That all appears to be in flux at the moment and the mood around Pacific Rim 2 seems to be pretty dire. It appears as if we can file this one alongside Hellboy 3 in the section of our souls marked for interesting Guillermo del Toro movies that never came to fruition.
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