Guillermo del Toro isn't thinking small with the follow-up to his 2013 Kaiju movie Pacific Rim, in fact, he's thinking so big that one movie won't be enough for what he's got planned.
"The direction we're going is very different from the first [movie]," the director told Collider.
"All I can say is that some of your favorite characters come back, some others don't, because we have decided that we're going to shoot ambitiously and say, 'let's hope we have three movies.' So some characters come in at the end of the second, hoping that it will ramp up on the third one. I hope people like it, but you're going to get a very different experience from the first one."
A third Pacific Rim movie is just the latest expansion of the nascent franchise.
Earlier this year, del Toro announced plans for an animated series based on the movie, in addition to continuing the comic book adventures of the Jaeger pilots as previously seen in the Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zerographic novel written by the movie's Travis Beachum.
Del Toro also gave Collider an update on the production schedule for the second cinematic installment.
"We've got the first draft of the [screenplay] now," he said, "and we are going to spend another four, five months on the screenplay before we start pre-production. We start pre-production next year in August, September, and we start shooting November, December next year."
Pacific Rim 2 is scheduled for release Apr. 7, 2017.
