Charlie Hunnam in Pacific Rim (2013) © Warner Bros. Pictures
Those: Collider
We recently reported that Noah Hawleys Star-TrekFilm, which was supposed to be a return to the roots of the franchise, was about to start production when Paramount pulled the emergency brake to the future of Star Trek to re-evaluate. It’s not the first big blockbuster that was stopped shortly before production or even in the middle of pre-production because the studio had doubts about its profitability. This is what happened to Joseph Kosinskis in 2015 TRON 3, which was canceled by Disney a few months before shooting started. In the same year, Guillermo del Toro’s sequel to his Kaijus vs. Jaeger film also became Pacific Rim stopped during preparations, although the script was already finished and filming should start in November 2015. Del Toro’s film was called Pacific Rim: Maelstrom and should directly continue the action of its predecessor.
Three years later the sequel was released under the title Pacific Rim: Uprisingbut without and without del Toro in the director’s chair Charlie Hunnam in the lead role as Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket, who he played in the first film. Only Rinko Kikuchi returned in a rather ungrateful short role as Mako Mori from the first Pacific Rim back and Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as scientists Newt and Gottlieb. The new main role took over instead Star-Wars-Star John Boyega, who played the son of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), who died heroically in the first film.
In a new interview with the online portal Collider Hunnam explained that he was supposed to return to the sequel under del Toro’s direction, but that the timing wasn’t right after the change of direction and the delay: (from English)
A lot of time has passed between the first film and the sequel. When Guillermo (del Toro) was still talking about it, I was definitely part of the conversation and also part of his vision. But until they decided to do it with another director, we talked about it, but I was already scheduled. There were business elements of production that required getting started very quickly. Legendary was just being acquired by Wanda from China at the time, and they wanted to make the film really fast and I just wasn’t available. Something like that happens.
Three years ago, Hunnam revealed that if the studio wanted to force him to do the sequel, he would have been contractually bound to the sequel. But he was about to make the remake of Papillon to shoot that he really wanted to do and that he was wholeheartedly involved, so that the then Legendary boss Tomas Tull let him go.
Hunnam added that he did Uprising has not seen until today and has come to terms with the circumstances:
I didn’t complain aloud about it. I’ve been in the business for a long time and I’ve shot a Pacific Rim, so I thought, “Go with God. Do your thing.” I haven’t actually seen the sequel, so I haven’t even given myself the chance to really think about whether or not I regret the decision.
Of course, one can only speculate about how Pacific Rim 2 with del Toro as director, but the version by Steven S. DeKnight that came out in theaters in 2018 was certainly not something to regret not doing. Hunnam probably wouldn’t have made the film any better either. I wasn’t a huge fan of del Toro’s original film either, but he definitely had a lot of good and sometimes weird ideas, and some really spectacular fights. The continuation was easy…. boring. And the last thing a movie about giant monsters and giant robots should be is boring. At the box office, too, viewers showed their disinterest and the film grossed only $ 290 million worldwide with a production budget of $ 150 million (excluding marketing costs). He wasn’t successful enough to get a third film for which there were already rough plans.
The world of Pacific Rim however lives on. Netflix is developing an anime series called “Pacific Tim: The Black”which takes place in the same world and is due to be released next year. The first two pictures from the series can be found below:
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