Guillermo del Toro created a rich, dense world when he and writer Travis Beacham dreamed up "Pacific Rim," and rabid audiences are already clamoring for more.
The recently-announced sequel promises to continue the exciting story of Kaiju vs. Jaegers, but what about all the unexplored corners of del Toro's scifi universe? Well the man himself, Guillermo del Toro, just gave fans some answers.
In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog, the prolific director-slash-geek god explains his three-pronged plan to tell all those untold stories. First, del Toro has revealed the first details about his animated TV series based on the property.
The "Pacific Rim" television series will be a prequel that focuses on the Jaeger pilots and trainees in the years before the first movie. Set at the Shatterdome, the enormous facility that serves as both Jaeger garage and pilot home base, some of the characters featured there will appear in the second movie. The idea is for the series to fill in their backstories so less time will be needed for that in the next movie.
There's no word yet which network will air the show, or whether it will be hand-drawn animation or computer-generated, but del Toro hopes to have it on the air for at least a year before the second movie is released.
The second piece of the puzzle is an ongoing comic book title. He told Speakeasy's Michael Calia that he was "incredibly happy" with the tie-in graphic novel that came out in conjunction with the first film. It was called "Tales from Year Zero," and it explored where various characters from the movie were and what they did when the first Kaiju attacks occurred.
Del Toro and production company Legendary have decided to continue these stories with three years worth of comic books. Presumably, the comics will tackle backstories set outside the Shatterdome. "Tales from Year Zero" was written by Travis Beacham, but it's logical to assume that the comic series will feature multiple writers.
The third part of the plan is, of course, "Pacific Rim 2." Any story details on the next movie, which is at least three years away, are wildly premature. Still, del Toro was willing to offer a few hints.
"And we came up with a really, really interesting idea," the director told the site. "I don’t want to spoil it, but I think at the end of the second movie, people will find out that the two movies stand on their own. They’re very different from each other, although hopefully bringing the same joyful giant spectacle. But the tenor of the two movies will be quite different."
Namely, he wants to explore the Drift, the neural link between Jaeger pilots, as well as the technology the aliens used to open the portal between their world and ours at the bottom of the Pacific ocean.
The idea behind all this, of course, is to keep expanding the franchise so that it stays present in fans' minds in the years between films. Del Toro says that he'll be overseeing all of it personally to ensure that everything is 100 percent canon.
