Following the surprising news that Pacific Rim 2 would be proceeding without Guillermo del Toro in the director’s chair, it’s been a little quiet on the Kaiju vs Mechas front, but a new writer has been found.
THR reports that Jurassic World and Safety Not Guaranteed writer Derek Connolly has jumped on board to join new director Steven S De Knight, who’s riding a wave of acclaim from showrunning the first season of Marvel’s Daredevil.
He’s not the first one to take a run at the screenplay for Pacific Rim 2. Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand), Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) and del Toro himself have all worked on drafts of the movie, and the site reports that it’s currently unclear as to whether Connolly will be starting from scratch or developing a previous screenplay.
Connolly is part of the Legendary monster movie family after his work on the mega-successful Jurassic World, and he was one of the writers on the upcoming Kong: Skull Island (along with Max Borenstein, John Gatins and Dan Gilroy).
Del Toro is still involved in Pacific Rim 2 but the extent of his involvement is unclear. We’ll have to wait and see how many of the film’s stars return, but we will just go on record as saying: if Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori and Charlie Day’s Newt Geiszler don’t come back, we’re going to be pretty furious.
Meanwhile, the director of Crimson Peak and Hellboy isn’t hanging about. The cast of his next film, apparently a Cold War love story with a monster, includes Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg and Richard Jenkins, and he’s also attached to a remake of Fantastic Voyage. And The Haunted Mansion. And Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. And he’s got his Netflix animated series Trollhunters. And…
No release date for Pacific Rim 2 has been announced. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
