Plans for Pacific Rim‘s TV show, which some may have forgotten was even in development, are shifting from concept to reality, as the series has officially found a home on Amazon.
As reported by Variety, Legendary Television and Amazon MGM have secured a deal to develop the series, written and executive produced by Eric Heisserer, known for Shadow and Bone, for Prime Video. The streamer has caught the mecha bug, having gained streaming rights for the fourth Neon Genesis Evangelion anime rebuild film, Thrice Upon a Time, as well as the new Mobile Suit Gundam anime, Gquuuuuux, so the move makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a bird’s eye view.
Not much has been revealed about the series outside of it serving as a prequel origin story for the franchise. Pacific Rim unfolds in a world where an interdimensional rift has opened in the Pacific Ocean, letting giant monsters wreak havoc. Humankind’s only course of counteraction is putting a two pilots in a giant robot called Jaegers, where they share a psychic link and kick ass. How much ass, you ask? Well, one pivotal scene in the original film call a giant robot named Gypsy Danger beat the brakes off a kaiju in a dense neon cityscape using a massive cargo ship as a baseball bat. Pacific Rim rips.
The forthcoming Prime Video series isn’t the franchise’s first expansion effort. In 2018, John Boyega headlined the sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising. Netflix also produced the anime Pacific Rim: Black, which ran for two seasons. Beyond screen adaptations, the franchise has ventured into merchandising, comics, and novels.
However, none have matched the impact of the original 2013 film, directed by Guillermo del Toro, which quickly achieved cult classic status among diehard fans of kaiju and giant robot action flicks. It also doesn’t hurt that the film grossed $400 million at the global box office.
With any luck, when the show premieres, Amazon’s Pacific Rim show will earn its place alongside del Toro’s film as a standout in the franchise, rather than fading into obscurity like some of its predecessors. Seeing as how Legendary already knocked it out of the park with its expansion of the Godzilla Monsterverse through Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the studio may be on the verge of striking lightning twice in the kaiju category—but only time will tell whether things shake out that way.
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