Guillermo del Toro Spills Details on the Pacific Rim Cartoon and Sequel!

The Pacific Rim fandom was shocked back into bioluminescent life a week ago when director Guillermo del Toro revealed that the 2013 blockbuster would not just be getting a much hoped-for, but uncertain sequel, but also a tie-in cartoon series and ongoing comic. Now he’s revealed some exciting details about those projects to The Wall Street Journal.

First, lets talk comics. Alluding to Tales From Year Zero, the film’s tie-in graphic novel, del Toro said that those tales would be continuing for the next three years, up to Pacific Rim 2‘s 2017 release. Likely that means that the ongoing series will, like Year Zero, concern itself with the very beginnings of the Jaeger program, and hopefully with some characters who received little to no mentions in the film, like Stacker Pentecost’s Royal Air Force officer sister Luna, or his first Drift partner, Tamsin Sevier; or the Russian and Chinese jaeger teams piloting Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon.

Del Toro hopes that between the comic, the animated series, and Pacific Rim itself, Pacific Rim 2 will be able to spend less time setting the stage of the Kaiju/Jaeger conflict and even more on its cast of characters. He’s a bit more specific on what the cartoon will concern itself with:

The series tackles the stories that happened to pilots working in the Shatterdome, but also cadets learning how to become pilots. All of this happens prior to the first movie, and it gives you a little more depth into the background of certain characters that will appear in the second movie… by the time the second movie comes out, you will have probably one year of the animation airing, and you will have three years of the comic book series ongoing, so we are trying for all these things to be canon, to be in the same universe.

And finally, del Toro drops a few hints on what Pacific Rim 2 will involve. First, there will be new characters, a reasonable move for a film that killed two main leads and five secondary characters before the credits rolled, but while he says that those who survived the first film will be involved, he doesn’t get more specific than that. But the plot, you ask? Well, the director understandably didn’t want to spoil anything three years out from release, but he did say that the second film will stand on its own and have a significantly different “tenor” than the first.

We had to sacrifice many aspects to be able to cram everything in the first movie. Namely, for example “the Drift”, which was an interesting concept. [Then there was] this portal that ripped a hole into the fabric of our universe, what were the tools they were using? And [while brainstorming Pacific Rim 2] we came up with a really, really interesting idea. [The two movies are] very different from each other, although hopefully bringing the same joyful giant spectacle. 

Given the amount of initial design work that del Toro pours into his movies, time to plan and design Pacific Rim 2 will actually start fairly soon.  Design of the movie begins in six weeks.

(via /Film)

Previously in Pacific Rim

• Pacific Rim 2 Is a Go For 2017, Plus We’re Getting Comics and an Animated Series!
• Guillermo del Toro Promises “Crazy Ideas” for the Pacific Rim Sequel That Still May Not Actually Happen
• The Most Impressive Pacific Rim Cosplay Skit You’re Likely To See

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