"Pacific Rim" hits theaters this Friday and little is known about how the film will perform at the box office. Despite this uncertainty, talk about a sequel has already started.
During the film's press tour last weekend in San Francisco, director Guillermo del Toro, Legendary Pictures President Thomas Tull and actress Rinko Kikuchi weighed in on the possibility of the follow-up to the monster-robot movie.
Del Toro has already stated that he has a number of major ideas to develop in a sequel that he never got a chance to explore in the first installment. Among those is the drift, a technique utilized to connect the brains of two different pilots so that they can control the massive robot Jaeger together. The drift enables the two characters to tap into each others' memories creating a number of moral dilemmas. Del Toro admitted that the first film did not explore these problems in depth.
"If god willing we make a second movie, I would love to explore the drift a lot more," del Toro asserted.
While del Toro did not specify how he could explore the drift further, Kikuchi provided a hint. (MAJOR SPOILER) "Maybe in the drift, [her character Mako] can [see ] Pentecost again?" In the film, Pentecost, played by Idris Elba meets his demise during a latter action sequence.
Kikuchi also suggested that the relationship between Mako and Charlie Hunnam's Raleigh Becket could "build up."
The possibility of a sequel likely hinges on how "Pacific Rim" performs at the box office. Early box office tracking had the film making a disappointing $30 million during its opening weekend. However, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. have since taken an active role in promoting the film to combat the poor prognostications.
"I'm not personally sure how much attention I'd pay to tracking. We've seen this year an incredible amount of films both good and bad that were [not] supposed to open up at all that opened up to double of what tracking said," Tull said. "You know [there were] things that were supposed to do well that fell short. So I think it's getting trickier and trickier because of diversification of audiences to sort of pinpoint [how well a film will perform]."
He supported his argument by noting that early test screenings of "Pacific Rim" resulted in positive reactions.
"When we tested the film we got very high scores and across all quadrants," he said. "We think that when people see it that they'll tell their friends and connect to it."
"Pacific Rim" hits theaters on July 12, 2013.
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