Warner Bros. Converting 'Pacific Rim' to 3D

Warner Bros. said Wednesday that is converting Guillermo del Toro's horror film Pacific Rim to 3D and will release the film July 12 as scheduled.

The much-anticipated movie, del Toro's first since 2008's Hellboy II: The Golden Army, follows a group of humans who defend the planet from a monstrous force via the use of piloted robots called mechas. It stars Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba and Charlie Day, among others.

Budgeted in the $200 million range, Pacific Rim is the first project wholly made by Legendary Pictures, which finances many Warners movies. Legendary's Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni are producers alongside Mary Parent and del Toro.

The conversion comes as a bit of a surprise to industry watchers. As late as July, del Toro was saying the movie would not be 3D, even though studios execs wanted the format.

"There was a discussion that took a long time to overcome and that was to make the movie 3D,” he told website Collider, noting it would affect the audience’s perceptions of scale of the giant characters. “And I didn’t want to make the movie 3D because when you have something big … to force the 3D effect on robots and monsters that are supposed to be [big], you are making them miniaturized, you are making them human scale. I knew that 3D effects sounded like a good idea, but it was going to be counter.”