Guillermo Del Toro Reveals Details on 'Pacific Rim' Animated Series

Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim wasn't quite the hit  here as it was globally, but there were still a ton of fans excited when a sequel was officially announced for April 7th 2017. That enthusiasm went beyond just news of a proper follow-up because Del Toro also revealed an animated series was on the way. Few details were available at the time but in a conversation with Collider about his FX series, The Strain, he talked about his plans to explore the world of Pacific Rim cartoon-style.

Not that Del Toro seemed too limited in what he could do in Pacific Rim but he says animation allows for even greater possibilities. He also says the series will serve as a bridge to the sequel, introducing some new characters while leaving room for familiar faces to appear....

Del Toro:  “We are right now in the middle of talking and negotiating with a few Japanese companies for the animation.  We are talking to a couple of showrunners that have a strong animation background, [we’re] casting the writers room.  What’s great is it’s a great set-up and a link between the first movie and the second movie.  It really enhances the mythology of the characters; we have cameos of characters from the first movie, but mostly it’s a new set of characters.  New jaegers, except for one or two, [and] new kaijus.  It’s really fun.”

He envisions it as a 13-episode season that will be one long arc following a specific group of characters and exploring different ideas, including the effects of "drifting"....

Del Toro: “We’re going for a long arc, so the idea is to show a group of characters—we have pilots, functional jaegers, but we have all these younger characters.  I really want to explore things that are complimentary to the things that I want to explore in the second movie: drift, what drifting does to you, what is needed to drift, a lot of stuff that I think is important, but also the jaeger technology, the kaijus being evolved, ideas about the precursors—the guys that control the kaijus.  We have a lot of leeway in 13 episodes and I wanna make it sort of in the same spirit of Pacific Rim, which is the ideal audience for Pacific Rim was young—very young, 11-year-olds and so forth—but with really beautiful design and stories that make these characters interesting in a way that I found them interesting in, for example, Year Zero, the graphic novel that we did.  And I think that’s the basic thrust of the thing.”

A network to carry the series hasn't been found yet, and Del Toro may not commit to an additional season until the first one lives up this expectations.