Universal Pictures has just announced today that their Pacific Rim sequel hit theaters on February 23, 2018. This move comes after the film was originally dated for release on April 7, 2017 before being pushed back to August 4, 2017 and eventually taken off Universal's upcoming release schedule altogether. With each delay, rumors grew louder that Universal was unsure about whether to greenlight the sequel, which earned $411 million worldwide from an estimated production budget of $190 million. Not a flop by any means but definitely not the type of gross that makes a sequel a no-brainer. However, John Boyega was recently cast to headline a sequel as Stacker Pentecost's (Idris Elba) son. No word yet on which cast from the first flick will be returning from the sequel.
Pacific Rim 2 currently has February 23 all to itself, however, Marvel's Black Panther opens the week before.
Though Pacific Rim 2 was removed from Universal's release schedule, development on the project continued. 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. As part of del Toro's ambitious plans for his budding franchise, the Hellboy director stated he wanted to develop 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.