If all goes well, Pacific Rim Uprising won’t be the last battle between Jaegers and Kaiju.
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The first Pacific Rim Uprising trailer was released today during a panel at New York Comic Con. It was there that director Steven S. DeKnight stated that he plans to grow the world of Pacific Rim much further than a single sequel.
“Guillermo [del Toro] set the table,” DeKnight said, referencing the director of the first Pacific Rim movie. “We wanted to make sure we honored what he created and also expanded the universe. This is hopefully the first step in a bigger Pacific Rim franchise.
“We really wanted to explore the universe and look at the first movie and expand on it. There are references to the first movie and what happened in the first movie as our people try to understand why the Kaiju attack, why the aliens sent the Kaiju. We really wanted to honor the first movie and go forward and moving 10 years in the future gave us the chance to do that.”
The war against the Kaiju appeared to be over after the Battle of the Breach in the first Pacific Rim. In that universe, there has been a decade of peace, though the Pacific Rim Defense Corps has remained vigilant, preparing new Jaegers in case the Kaiju ever made a comeback.
It seems they were right to do so, as Pacific Rim Uprising sees a new generation of pilots going into battle against a new wave of monsters.
Pacific Rim Uprising stars John Boyega as Jake Pentecost, the son of Stacker Pentecost, the high-ranking PPDC officer who was played by Idris Elba in the first film.
Stacker’s adopted daughter Mako Mori will also return in the sequel, played again by Rinko Kikuchi. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman will also reprise their roles from the original.
New cast members joining the universe in Pacific Rim Uprising include Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Adria Arjona, and Jing Tian.
Pacific Rim: Uprising opens in theaters on March 23, 2018.