Fans have waited since 2013 for another trip to the world of Pacific Rim, and it seems the future prospects for the franchise might have made the wait worth it.
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The first Pacific Rim was well received, though it’s large budget hurt chances of a sequel. Enter Pacific Rim Uprising, which is helmed by director Steven S. DeKnight (Daredevil), and plans on building the foundation for a franchise.
“There are many seeds being sown here,” DeKnight told ComicBook.com. “Yeah, I would love to do another one, and part of the process when we got to the end of the script was talking about, okay, you want to make sure you have somewhere to go. I talked with the good people at Legendary, and pitched them my idea of not only the next movie but after the next movie how to use that as a jumping off point for an expanded universe the size of a Star Wars or a Star Trek that you can explore.”
A Star Wars or Star Trek sized universe to explore will sound phenomenal to fans, and the debut trailer for the project certainly shows high potential. New and even deadlier Kaiju going against even more Jaeger’s with a city as their battleground sounds amazing, even without Guillermo Del Toro at the helm.
As with the original though, Uprising’s main obstacle to making that happen will be bringing enough box office in to warrant its high price.
That would be the substantial budget. Now, the good news is that Pacific Rim Uprising only costs $150 million, as opposed to the original Pacific Rim, which cost $190 million. The original ended up making around $101 million domestically, with a worldwide total of $411 million. That’s an all-out success if not for the high budget, and Uprising did the smart thing by bringing that down some.
If Uprising can break through to that $500 million area, it might just make that new franchise happen.
Pacific Rim Uprising hits theaters on March 23, 2018.
