Guillermo Del Toro to Shoot Small, Black & White Film Before 'Pacific Rim 2'

Guillermo Del Toro is hardly the most prolific filmmaker around, which is why it's such a big deal when he undertakes anything. Pacific Rim was his first movie since 2006's Pan's Labyrinth, although his name was attached to many other projects as a producer. While he's turned his attention briefly to TV for The Strain, which debuts later this week, we also know Del Toro will be returning to the kaiju world for Pacific Rim 2 in 2017. But it won't actually be the next thing he directs, as he tells Collider something much smaller will precede it.

Del Toro: “Right away, in February/March I should [start on] another very small movie, black and white, really, really bizarre before starting—we start pre-production on Pacific Rim 2 in August, and then I interrupt it briefly to go into the first of next year to do this strange little movie, and then I restart it and go all the way until we start shooting Pacific Rim 2 at the end of 2015 for release in 2017.”

He doesn't reveal much else about it, except it will have a very small cast and he has a couple of actors in mind for it. One of those would be John Hurt, currently seen in Snowpiercer, and the other is an unknown actress he didn't want to name. And will there be monsters in this one like so many of Del Toro's films tend to? The answer is yes, but only "one great creature" will appear.

It has been a long time since Del Toro took on a small-scale project and it will be very interesting to see if his studio experiences color his approach.