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Guillermo del Toro To Helm A Black & White Film Before Pacific Rim 2

By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS)

Looks like Guillermo del Toro is planning to sneak in a film before shooting Pacific Rim 2. He spoke?about the project that will sit in between Crimson Peak and the Pacific Rim sequel.

Right away, in February/March I should start on another very small movie, black and white, really, really bizarre. We start pre-production on Pacific Rim 2 in August this year, 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 [Pacific Rim 2] and go all the way until we start shooting at the end of 2015 for release in 2017 – GDT to Collider

This isn’t the first time a director has done something along these lines. Robert Zemeckis filmed What Lies Beneath during the break on Cast Away, while Tom Hanks lost weight and grew out his beard, or Joss Whedon filmed Much Ado About Nothing on a break from The Avengers. As for who’s in it or what it’s about, This is all del Toro had to say:

It’s a very small cast. I would love to have John Hurt, and there’s an actress that I have in mind that is not well known but I’ve seen her in a short film. That’s all she’s really done, one feature and one short, but she has an incredibly interesting taste and I’m gonna try her out for the main role.

Speaking of what he’s doing between now and Pacific Rim 2, del Toro?also gave Collider some more details regarding the animated series.

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.

While the series may link up the first film and the sequel, the animated series will definitely take place before the first film. He’s a bit more forthcoming on the plot for the series than his secret film and how many episodes we’re in for:

We're going for a long arc, so the idea is to show a group of characterswe 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 precursorsthe 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 youngvery young, 11-year-olds and so forthbut 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.

As for where it will premiere, I’m still hedging my bet that it’ll end up on Netflix as opposed to network television. While del Toro doesn’t really say much along those line,s he does let us know talks are already underway:

Legendary is talking to a few outlets, so I'd rather not disclose myself. The way we set up The Strain was to talk to everyone, literally, on the map, and then find who's response we sort of jibe with the most. I think in this series, it would be great to find a place that can give it a proper presentation and can advertise the creation of the series. So we're open to being pleasantly surprised everywhere.

Pacific Rim 2 will premiere April 7, 2017, while Crimson Peak opens in the fall of 2015. No word yet on the release date for his black and white film. With all these new movies, it’s clear GDT is making up for lost time, after not directing for 5 years between Hellboy 2 and Pacific Rim, due to production stalling on The Hobbit (until Peter Jackson picked up the reigns) and At the Mountains of Madness.