Are You Ready? John Boyega Confirmed for Lead Role in Pacific Rim 2

Legendary Pictures just announced that they’ve tapped John Boyega to take the lead role in their upcoming addition to Guillermo del Toro’s monster-robot-fighting flick, Pacific Rim. In addition to this announcement, they said that Boyega will be playing Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba)’s son. Offering his seal of approval, del Toro said, “I am very proud and happy to welcome John into a fantastic sandbox. The Pacific Rim universe will be reinforced with him as a leading man as it continues to be a multicultural, multi-layered world. ‘The World saving the world’ was our goal and I couldn’t think of a better man for the job.”

We’re still unclear about whether this next movie will be a prequel or a sequel. Rumors abound about it possibly being a movie that focuses more on the Kaiju world, taking place before the events of Pacific Rim. Knowing that he’s Pentecost’s son doesn’t exactly nail it down, either. He doesn’t exactly talk about his son a whole lot in the movie, so it could very well be that Boyega’s character is either KIA or MIA at the beginning of Pacific Rim (if, you know, this turns out to be a sequel). But, chances are just as equal that Pacific Rim 2 takes place after they’ve sealed the Breach, and it’s a story about Lil Pentecost going on in a world without his father.

Consider, though, that all of this comes with a pretty solid outside chance of Elba reprising his role in one form or another, either as a drift memory or as himself. But personally, I’d really love to see this be a sequel and I’d love love love to see how Boyega’s character interacts with Mako, who was Pentecost’s adopted daughter. That’d make for some seriously intriguing interactions, don’t you think?

We’ve got a ways to go, as we don’t even have a close release date for the movie. But just chill and let the headcanons roll, friends.

(via Deadline)

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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