When Steven S. DeKnight was hired to replace Guillermo del Toro as director on the
Pacific Rim sequel, he discovered that there were three seperate, independant scripts in development His solution? To cherry-pick the best elements of all three into one script.
"When I came on there were three other drafts of the script that were developed through the years. I read them and there were great elements of each one, so I cherry-picked the best parts of three scripts, which was fantastic to have that opportunity. Then I sent Kira (Snyder) and Emily (Carmichael) off to write the script because we only had like three weeks to write it at that point, and as they were writing, I was rewriting, and then we had a draft of the script at that point."
However, there was only one problem with the version that came out of that merger. It still included Charlie Hunnam's Raleigh Becket.
"
Then, if I remember the story correctly, I turned [in the script], Legendary loves it, and literally 24 hours later, Charlie Hunnam announces he was doing the ‘Papillon’ remake and wasn’t available, so we had a bit of a scramble to re-conceive the idea. We wanted to keep the story we had, just take Charlie Hunnam out of it and realign it. So we did some amazing work and I started polishing it up and here we are."
In short, it sounds as if the sequel was originally intended to star Hunnam but his unavailability led to John Boyega joining the cast as Stacker Pentecost's son. And based on DeKnight's statements, these changes were made very late in the project's development, mere weeks before filming was set to begin. It will be interesting to see if the finished version of the film feels like a disjointed amalgamation of three seperate ideas or if DeKnight and co. somehow managed to craft a gem at the zero hour.
Pacific Rim: Uprising is set to hit theaters on March 23, 2018.
The globe-spanning conflict between otherworldly monsters of mass destruction and the human-piloted super-machines built to vanquish them was only a prelude to the all-out assault on humanity in Pacific Rim Uprising.
John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) stars as the rebellious Jake Pentecost, a once-promising Jaeger pilot whose legendary father gave his life to secure humanity’s victory against the monstrous “Kaiju.” Jake has since abandoned his training only to become caught up in a criminal underworld. But when an even more unstoppable threat is unleashed to tear through our cities and bring the world to its knees, he is given one last chance to live up to his father’s legacy by his estranged sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi)—who is leading a brave new generation of pilots that have grown up in the shadow of war. As they seek justice for the fallen, their only hope is to unite together in a global uprising against the forces of extinction.
Jake is joined by gifted rival pilot Lambert (The Fate of the Furious’ Scott Eastwood) and 15-year-old Jaeger hacker Amara (newcomer Cailee Spaeny), as the heroes of the PPDC become the only family he has left. Rising up to become the most powerful defense force to ever walk the earth, they will set course for a spectacular all-new adventure on a towering scale.
Pacific Rim Uprising is directed by Steven S. DeKnight (Netflix’s Daredevil, STARZ’s Spartacus) and also stars Jing Tian, Burn Gorman, Adria Arjona and Charlie Day.