Legendary Pictures confirmed Wednesday that Guillermo del Toro will be directing the company’s monster movie, Pacific Rim, setting a September 2011 start date.
Del Toro was working on his passion project, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness for Universal, but he and the studio reached an impasse over budget and rating. (One issue was the studio wanted a PG-13 movie while the filmmaker was intent on making an intense scary movie.)
Madness began falling apart last week. Not wanting to miss a beat, del Toro switched his attention to Rim, which he had been stealthily involved with ever since Legendary picked up the Travis Beacham-scripted project last June.
Rim, which Legendary sees as a PG-13 movie, is a monster movie that sees powerful extraterrestrial force threaten the Earth’s existence, with humans uniting to fight them off.
Legendary is eyeing a summer 2013 release date. Del Toro will produce with Legendary’s Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni.
In a statement, del Toro said: “We started developing PAC RIM a while ago with the mad passion and enthusiasm of a project unwatched and unchecked by politics or comparisons. We designed and shepherded the movie we want to make. We start shooting in September and we hit the ground running because we are so in sync. My partnership with Legendary represents, both in scale and creative demands, a huge step forward for me.”
