Uh Oh – PACIFIC RIM: MAELSTROM Might be Delayed


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I’m one of the few who loved Pacific Rim. Sure, it was ridiculous, but it had a lot of heart and didn’t take itself too seriously; it’s the type of movie you can truly watch and just enjoy, unlike Transformers with its incoherent metal-smashing-messiness. Unfortunately, America didn’t seem to agree with me, since the movie only just scraped $100m there. Thank God for China, ‘eh? It made 3x as much there, meaning a sequel and an animated series was greenlit for August 4th, 2017. Or so we thought.

Latino Review are running a rumour that the sequel has been delayed, but they’re not entirely sure why. It was supposed to film in Toronto this November, but instead it’ll be sometime in 2016 – meaning it probably won’t make that August release date. It’s not out-of-the-blue for a big film like this to be delayed; the budget will definitely have been slashed but Guillermo del Toro is still dealing with over $100m and making a huge monster flick, which can always lead to complications. Let’s just hope it’s nothing story-related.

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Depending on the reasoning, this could actually be a good thing. del Toro is always an extremely busy man and you always need to make sure the story is 100% right before delving too deep into pre-production. Plus, there’s the matter of money – as in, whether it’ll make any. August is a better release date for it than March was (it was pushed back from there) but it’s got a lot of competition beforehand; this, War of the Planet of the Apes, Pitch Perfect 3, Christopher Nolan’s new movie and the Spider-Man reboot are all opening within three weeks of each other. Given how precarious the box office was last time, Universal will want to maximise its potential as much as possible.

So, if it is pushed back, when could it be? April 2018 doesn’t currently have anything set, whereas March and May are both packed. I’m no box office or release date expert, though, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for news on what Universal decide to do. Like I said, I am a big fan of those kaijus, so the delay does suck (a lot). However, something I’ve learned after all these years – four – is that it’s better to wait for a great finished product than to rush it for a mediocre one.

Pacific Rim: Maelstrom is hitting cinemas at some point.