After starring in 2016's Couting to 1,00, Cailee Spaeny has landed the female lead in director Steven S. DeKnight's Pacific Rim 2. She'll star opposite John Boyega, who will play the son of Idris Elba's Stacker Pentecost. Variety also reports that contract talks between Scott Eastwood and Universal/Legendary have been finalized.
Charlie Hunnam previously confirmed that he won't return for the sequel and with the addition of a new female lead, it looks as if Rinko Kikuchi's return is doubtful as well.
Spaeny burst on the scene in 2012 with YouTube videos of her singing popular covers. Her debut single, Fallin was released on iTunes earlier this year.
ABOUT PACIFIC RIM 2
Though Pacific Rim 2 was initially removed from Universal's release schedule, development on the project continued and the film received a new release date of February 23, 2018. Guillermo del Toro will step aside to let Daredevil showrunner Steven S. DeKnight sit in the director's chair and screenwriter Travis Beacham has made room for Zak Penn, Jon Spaihts and Derek Connollt (Jurassic World, Kong: Skull Island) to write the sequel.
Initally, del Toro's ambitious plans for his budding franchise included comic books, anime and video game tie-ins. A single-player fighting game was released to generally negative reviews for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in 2013. A prequel graphic novel Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero was written by Beacham and released in 2013.