Thomas Tull of Legendary Pictures makes it sound like his company is ready to start a Pacific Rim sequel just as soon as Guillermo del Toro says yes.
The sequel buzz for Pacific Rim is dear to the hearts of many people, and not just fans of the movie specifically. If Pacific Rim were to make it to franchise status, it would be one of the rare movies to do so… that isn’t based directly on a licensed concept or a story in the public domain. And there are a lot of fans of movies and science fiction film in general who would welcome that outcome. Tull, CEO of Legendary Pictures, spoke to Collider about the possibility:
Frankly [Pacific Rim], if you look it up, did I think more business than the first X-Men, did more than Batman Begins, our first movie, did more than Superman Returns, The Fast and the Furious, Star Trek– so for a movie that was an original property that we made up it’s done really well. It did north of 400 million dollars globally and both the home video sales and the merchandise have way over-indexed, so it seems like fans really loved the world.
The movie industry has notoriously high standards for what constitutes a success when it comes to blockbuster film. A mere recoup of losses doesn’t necessarily push a film in to the category of “good investments,” but to date, Pacific Rim‘s net gross exceeds what it cost to make. That’s a wide margin even if you factor in the significant cost of promoting the film. The films profits were slow to grow, and were, as Tull says, heavily supported by the international market, both things that make it less appealing to Hollywood trends. But Tull seems confident, saying “we’re going to sit down with Guillermo and as long as we think it’s authentic and there’s something to say, we’re certainly open to it.”
That’s as concrete news as we’ve had so far for the project, for which del Toro and screenwriter Travis Beacham have repeatedly telegraphed their interest. Beacham in particular has been open about the world details that he was disappointed to have had to leave out of Pacific Rim, and has noted several unfinished threads (such as, thanks to Dr. Newton Geiszler drifting with the kaiju hive-mind, a much advanced kaiju understanding of humanity) that could be fleshed out into a sequel. Don’t let me down, Pacific Rim 2. Don’t let me down.
(via Collider.)
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