After helming the giant robots vs. kaiju movie “Pacific Rim” which released in 2013, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro didn’t return to direct the sequel “Pacific Rim: Uprising” in 2018.
Instead, Steven S. DeKnight took over as director whilst Del Toro remained on as a producer. Whilst the first scored fairly positive reviews and grossed $411 million worldwide, the follow-up was generally panned and made less with a total of $290.9 million worldwide.
That killed any potential future for the franchise. Turns out though, Del Toro was originally signed on to direct the sequel but ultimately didn’t as the sound stages he wanted to shoot on were not available.
Why? Because the studio was late putting a deposit down to reserve those stages for the shoot. Speaking with Collider to mark the film’s 10th anniversary, he says:
“We were getting ready to do it, it was different from the first, but it had a continuation of many of the things that I was trying to do. Then what happened is – I mean, this is why life’s crazy, right? – they had to give a deposit for the stages at 5pm or we would lose the stages in Toronto for many months.
So, I said, ‘Don’t forget we’re gonna lose the stages,’ and five o’clock came and went, and we lost the stages. They said, ‘Well, we can shoot it in China.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean we?’ [Laughs] ‘I’ve gotta go do Shape of Water.'”
He did go on to direct that film which went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director in 2017. Del Toro also says he has not watched “Pacific Rim: Uprising” as yet with good reason:
“I didn’t see the final movie because that’s like watching home movies from your ex-wife. It is terrible if they’re good and worse if they’re bad, or the opposite. You don’t wanna know. So, I didn’t see it. I did read the final script, and it was very different. Some of the elements were the same but very different.”
Del Toro most recently directed Netflix’s stop-motion animated “Pinocchio” movie which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. He’ll soon be doing an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” which will shoot in February and will star Oscar Isaac, Andrew Garfield, Christoph Waltz and Mia Goth.
