Despite a series of impressive trailers which made Pacific Rim look like it could be movie of the year material, it ultimately received a tepid response from critics and disappointed at the box office. It’s only thanks to China and a number of other key international territories that it made enough to justify a sequel!

It helps that Legendary are now teamed with Universal Pictures, a studio desperate for franchises; it’s believed that had they still been working with Warner Bros., Pacific Rim would have been the first and last.

In a recent interview, Guillermo del Toro – who is currently writing the sequel with The Incredible Hulk scribe Zak Penn – offered some new details on the direction of Pacific Rim 2 and plans for a third movie.

“The direction we’re going in is very different from the first. All I can say is some of your favorite characters come back, some others don’t because we have decided that we’re going to shoot ambitiously and say ‘Let’s hope we have three movies,’’ so some characters come in at the end of the second, hoping that it will ramp up on the third one. I hope people like it but you’re gonna get a very different experience from the first one.”

Of course, before he gets too involved with the next Pacific Rim movie, he has to continue developing the second season of The Strain and put the finishing touches on upcoming horror movie Crimson Peak.

“We got the first draft of the movie now, and we are going to spend another 4-5 months on the screenplay before we start pre-production,” del Toro confirmed. “We start pre-production next year in August-September and start shooting November-December next year. Pacific Rim 2 has an April 7th, 2017 release date.