1) It Would Still Make Money
If the fundamental issue Universal has about Pacific Rim 2 is regarding money, the suits needn’t worry. Pacific Rim may have under-performed stateside, but in the grand scheme of things that isn’t quite so important anymore, not when there’s a new box office power all the way across the Pacific.
It was China that recently took Furious 7 and Transformers: Age of Extinction past the billion dollar mark, and China that saved Pacific Rim from being a box office bomb (the film was, in 2013, actually the sixth-highest grossing film ever in the country).
Since Pacific Rim, the Chinese market has only become more important and more crucial for a film’s financial chances. With the Pacific Rim brand already established there, and with the movie having found further popularity elsewhere on home video, the sequel would almost certainly break even at the least, but more likely make a profit (the general rule of thumb these days is that the sequel out-performs the original).
Pacific Rim 2 may be considered a gamble, but when creatively and financially the film is near-guaranteed to be a hit, Universal has virtually nothing to lose.