‘Jurassic Park’ Writer Joins ‘Pacific Rim 2’

Pacific Rim (2013) – Jaeger fighting Kaiju

The studio has announced that Pacific Rim 2 is moving forward with Daredevil showrunner Steven DeKnight directing and Jurassic Park 2 writer Derek Connolly working on the script.

For those who don’t know, Pacific Rim is a 2013 movie directed by Guillermo del Toro about a future world in the 2020s ravaged by giant interdimensional monsters from the ocean known as “Kaiju”. To fight the creatures, an international team builds giant robots called “Jaegers” to fight them hand-to-hand. The movie follows a washed-up Jaeger pilot named Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and a rookie pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) who go on one last mission to defeat the beasts once and for all.

The movie didn’t do well in the U.S. but was huge worldwide – especially in China – pulling in more than $411 million. With that kind of money a sequel was expected and in 2014 they announced the movie was happening with the working title Maelstrom due for release in August 2017. The plot has never been confirmed but rumors ranged from a prequel, a “humanKaiju hybrid” to a sequel where Jaegers are commonplace. Everything looked good. Then the wheels came off.

Rumors swirled that the huge $190 million budget of the original along with in-fighting between the studios Universal Pictures and Legendary Pictures. Finally, Legendary announced the movie was being delayed indefinitely.

del Toro still insists the movie is happening though telling reporters that two of the main characters in Pacific Rim 2 are Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Gottlieb (Burn Gorman). “Charlie Day has a great part but so does Charlie Hunnam,” del Toro said according to Hollywood Reporter, “I think that everybody or most everybody that survived is back. The rest we killed. We killed half the cast.”

The script for Pacific Rim was written by Travis Beacham and del Toro. Several drafts for the untitled Pacific Rim sequel have been written by del Toro, Zak Penn, and Jon Spaihts. It’s unknown if Derek Connolly is rewriting the script or just adapting the current one.

While I’m sad that Guillermo del Toro’s directing. It’s a pretty good team. Derek Connolly wrote Safety Not Guaranteed, co-wrote Jurassic World and Kong: Skull Island. He also co-wrote Lupita N’yongo’s sci-fi drama Intelligent Life for Dreamworks.

Plus, Guillermo del Toro isn’t going anywhere. He’s going to be riding in the producer’s chair for the film. Today we are not canceling the apocalypse!

Via The Hollywood Reporter

Are you excited about Pacific Rim 2? Are you disappointed del Toro isn’t directing?

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