Hellboy wasn’t the only cult franchise to lose visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro; in 2016, Pacific Rim found new blood in Daredevil director Steven S. DeKnight, who is now prepped and ready to launch a cinematic Uprising.
Working from the foundations put in place by del Toro and screenwriter Travis Beacham, Pacific Rim: Uprising will seemingly take one giant step toward becoming Hollywood’s next cinematic universe – perhaps opening up a potential crossover with Legendary’s MonsterVerse in the process?
The jury’s still out on that one, but as Pacific Rim: Uprising inches closer and closer to release, ComingSoon.net caught up with the film’s producer, Cale Boyter, who outlined Guillermo Del Toro’s involvement in the larger-than-life sequel.
He’s been involved from the different ideas, weighing in, the different drafts. We send him all the visuals and everything. He loves Boyega. Obviously all the stuff he looked at he’s touched and noted. He hasn’t been here yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point he ends up here. Moves things around and I’ll be like ‘No, go back over there.’
Upon inheriting del Toro’s franchise, Steven S. DeKnight was seemingly faced with multiple story treatments, one of which left the door open for Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) to return. But more on that later; for now, here’s what the director himself said about Uprising‘s pre-production process.
When I came on there were three other drafts of the script that were developed through the years,” DeKnight revealed. “I read them and there were great elements of each one, so I cherry-picked the best parts of three scripts, which was fantastic to have that opportunity.
Mako Mori may be returning, but it seems as though Hunnam was simply too much of a stretch, as DeKnight recalls:
We wanted to keep the story we had, just take Charlie Hunnam out of it and realign it. So we did some amazing work and I started polishing it up and here we are.
A category VI Kaiju will loom large over theaters when Pacific Rim: Uprising makes land on March 23rd, 2018. One glance at Hollywood’s stacked calendar reveals that both Tomb Raider and Ready Player One have been slated for a similar window, so Uprising faces a tall order if it’s to, ahem, rise up against the box office competition.
