Let’s be honest, Pacific Rim 2 seemed like a stretch. The original story from Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro performed well enough at the box office, but a sequel was a nice thought that could very well never happen. But now a release date has been set for August 4, 2017. So, cudos to del Toro. With the film prepping for production later this year, it seems as though it picked up one more thing: a new title.
According to Global News, the working title for Pacific Rim 2 is — drum roll, please — Maelstrom. The implications are pretty straightforward: the first film has an inter-dimensional rip at the bottom of the ocean that unleashed massive kaiju beasts unto this world. Maelstrom appears to be another chaotic play on these creatures from the watery depths. The studio hasn’t announced an official title yet, however, so perhaps they haven’t fully decided on this name for the sequel.
In addition to the working title, del Toro is preparing to enter production on Pacific Rim 2 this November at the Pinewood Studios location in Toronto. No casting has been announced, though Charlie Hunnam (Raleigh), Rinko Kikuchi (Mako), Charlie Day (Dr. Newton Geiszler), and Burn Gorman (Gottlieb) are all expected to return. You can probably also expect Ron Perlman’s Hannibal Chau to pop back in. Del Toro loves his Hellboy.
Del Toro talked up a storm about the plot for the sequel over the past year or so, probably because it seemed at the time like the studio wouldn’t green light the project. Whereas Pacific Rim revolved around the Jaeger pilots battling the kaiju menace, the sequel will focus more on the monsters and what happens after this threat is gone. As del Toro mused, what happens to the Jaeger technology once the kaiju are no longer a problem? "It’s quite a jump," he said.
Some other fun tidbits we’ve picked up from del Toro in the past are that both films can stand on their own, there will be a lot more types of kaiju and a few more Jaegers, new characters will join the survivors of the first film, and Pacific Rim 2 was once intended to lead into a third film. Del Toro said a while back that some characters pop in at the end of the second to ramp things up into a third installment, though it’s unclear if that’s still the current plan.
Elsewhere, del Toro is getting ready to debut his haunted house horror story, Crimson Peak, on October 16. The film stars Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, and Pacific Rim star Hunnam. The filmmaker also recently dropped his plans to make Justice League Dark so he could focus on Pacific Rim 2, and hopefully that means good things are in store.
