‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ News: Steven DeKnight on run time, joining Godzilla and King Kong, plans for ‘Pacific Rim 3’
During an interview with Collider at the NYCC director Steven S. DeKnight discussed Pacific Rim: Uprising, taking over the franchise, beginning with his thoughts on a run time.
“It’s resting right around two hours. I always shoot for two hours,” DeKnight tells Collider. “If I was doing Lawrence of Arabia it would be a little longer, but otherwise I think the two-hour mark—this is just for me as somebody that loves movies and watches movies, two hours is always right around the sweet spot. If it’s much less than two hours then I start to get a little suspicious, if it’s much more longer sometimes a movie will support that but sometimes you just get a little worn out.”
He discussed his director’s cut and trimming the film down from there.
“I think my director’s cut was 2 hours 18 minutes, around there. It was in the ballpark, and then I got a chance to step back, look at the movie, talk with the producers, really kick the tires and it’s kind of like the last rewrite of the script. There are things that suddenly became very clear that you don’t need this, you don’t need that, you can move this over here, the story is much cleaner and much more exciting that way.”
A new poster, set of photos and the first trailer all arrived earlier this month around and at NYCC.
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.
Check out the new trailer HERE.
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.
JOHN BOYEGA as Jake and SCOTT EASTWOOD as Lambert in the Gipsy Avenger
Fueling buzz in the fan circle, DeKnight even hints at Pacific Rim joining the Legendary Monster Universe which features King Kong and Godzilla.
“I won’t say there’s an Easter Egg but there’s been a lot of discussion about that possibility [of crossing over]. Look I think it would be fantastic to have the Pacific Rim universe join Legendary’s Monster Universe, it seems like a natural step. And part of the big overall plan after the third movie we’ve talked about is that could happen, it’s always a possibility. It’s by far not a certainty; it’s merely theoretical at this point, but as a fan myself I would love to see that happen.”
Pacific Rim Uprising is directed by Steven S. DeKnight (Netflix’s Daredevil, STARZ’s Spartacus) based on a story by DeKnight and T.S. Nowlin (Maze Runner), and screenplay by Emily Carmichael (Adventures of Ledo and Ix) & Kira Snyder (The Handmaid’s Tale) and DeKnight and Nowlin.
Uprising also stars Jing Tian, Burn Gorman, Adria Arjona and Charlie Day.
Pacific Rim: Uprising opens in theaters on March 23, 2018.
It sounds like there are plans for Pacific Rim 3, which DeKnight says the ending of Pacific Rim: Uprising plants the seeds for a third installment: “Oh we definitely leave it open to another installment. The tricky thing with something like this is you want to not end on a cliffhanger. You don’t want an Empire Strikes Back cliffhanger unless you know you’re gonna do a third movie—you want to leave it open but also wrap it up. So that’s very much what we did on this movie. It has a definitive ending but very much open to the next chapter.”
