Guillermo del Toro reveals why he didn’t direct ‘Pacific Rim’ sequel: “We lost the stages”
Veteran filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has explained why he didn’t end up making the sequel to 2013’s Pacific Rim.
Notably, the movie is the first in the franchise and stars Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, and Ron Perlman. It is set in the future when the world is in conflict with the Kaiju sea monsters who have emerged through an interdimensional portal on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. To combat them, the humans create the gigantic humanoid mechas, the Jaegers.
The Pinocchio filmmaker Del Toro was initially on board to direct the sequel to the blockbuster but ultimately dropped out due to the sound stages he wanted to shoot at not being available, he has revealed.
“We were getting ready to do it, it was different from the first, but it had a continuation of many of the things that I was trying to do. Then what happened is—I mean, this is why life’s crazy, right?—they had to give a deposit for the stages at 5pm or we would lose the stages in Toronto for many months,” the director told Collider as part of the film’s tenth-anniversary celebration.
He continued: “So, I said, ‘Don’t forget we’re gonna lose the stages,’ and five o’clock came and went, and we lost the stages. They said, ‘Well, we can shoot it in China.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean we?’ [Laughs] ‘I’ve gotta go do Shape of Water.'”
The sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising, was directed by Steven S. DeKnight and was released in 2018. Del Toro was one of the producers on the project; however, he says he still hasn’t seen the final version. “It’s like watching your home movies from your ex-wife,” he commented.
“I didn’t see the final movie because that’s like watching home movies from your ex-wife,” del Toro concluded. “It is terrible if they’re good and worse if they’re bad, or the opposite. You don’t wanna know. So, I didn’t see it. I did read the final script, and it was very different. Some of the elements were the same but very different.”
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