Guillermo Del Toro Talks About Handing off Pacific Rim 2 and Working as a Producer

Although the path of Pacific Rim: Uprising was a rocky one, Guillermo del Toro’s persistence and reassurance carried us through, and now we have a sequel with John Boyega and director Steven S. DeKnight on the horizon. So far, the looks we’ve gotten are promising, but we’re also not sure about how Uprising will differ from the first with a different team.

In an interview with Collider, del Toro discusses stepping down as director for the much-anticipated sequel and working instead as a producer on the film. The reason, he says, was mainly due to timing and his desire to make The Shape of Water, a film that’s been described as “Wall-E meets Splash.”

The timing started to suck. I had this little movie that I wanted to do—The Shape of Water—very, very much. At one point it was Justice League Dark or Pacific Rim, I said, ‘Let’s go to Pacific Rim.’ The reality is they said, ‘We’re gonna need to postpone,’ because they were changing hands—Legendary was going to be sold to China, to a Chinese company [called the Wanda Group]. They said, ‘We’ve gotta wait nine months’ and I said, ‘I’m not waiting nine months, I’m shooting a movie,’ and I went and shot [The Shape of Water] and we chose Steven DeKnight.

While some might feel let down by this switch, del Toro gives DeKnight his stamp of approval, calling him “brilliant” and “a great choice.” He states that he’s giving the Daredevil showrunner room to make the film his own and that he’s OK with Uprising being “different than what I developed.”

Del Toro’s reassurance is definitely heartening. Are you looking forward tto Uprising?

(via Slash Film, Image: Warner Bros.)
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