Over the last few months it's been looking less and less likely there would be a sequel to Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim. While the director remained confident, Legendary and Universal seemed skittish about paying for a follow-up to the expensive sci-fi flick. And now there's been a resolution to the issue, and it's a pretty unexpected one.
According to Deadline, Pacific Rim 2 is a go, but with Steven S. DeKnight as director, not Del Toro. DeKnight was the showrunner on Daredevil's first season, as well as on Starz's Spartacus series. This will mark DeKnight's directorial debut on a feature, but he's been involved recently with Paramount's Transformers writers room.
But don't think this means Del Toro is out of the picture, or that there is bad blood between he and the studio. The director recently tweeted what amounts to a confirmation that he'll be very much involved with expanding Pacific Rim further.
Met w DeKnight and we are all so happy with our choice to take Pac Rim 2to where we know it can go!!— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) February 24, 2016
So chances are DeKnight will come in and have less than Del Toro's huge $200M budget to work with, which is exactly what Legendary and Universal wanted all along. He'll be directing from a script by Jon Spaihts (Prometheus), and it'll be interesting to see what elements may have been dropped to keep the costs down.Now Pac Rim is a known property and we can expand big!— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) February 24, 2016
