For a while, it looked as though Legendary Pictures had cornered the market in Hollywood when it came to kaiju, with Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim arriving in theaters just ten months before Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla kicked off the MonsterVerse. Both movies faced very different fates, though, with the former only saved from box office disaster by a strong showing in China, while the King of the Monsters’ return raked in almost $530 million globally.
The second installments, meanwhile, doomed one franchise, while reaffirming the popularity of the other. Steven S. DeKnight’s Pacific Rim: Uprising wound up hugely underperforming and just about squeaked past $290 million, a poor number for a blockbuster sequel armed with a budget rumored to be hovering around $175 million. Meanwhile, Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island rocketed to a haul of $566 million.
Pacific Rim is as good as done in live-action, while the Godzilla vs. Kong trailer has been breaking records as the hype continues to build towards next month’s epic showdown. Del Toro admitted in the past that he’d loved to have seen the Jaegers face off with the likes of Godzilla and King Kong, and Uprising‘s DeKnight has now revealed in a social media exchange with a fan that that was his long-term plan, as you can see below.
That was actually my long term plan. PR3 was structured to end in a way that married the two universes. https://t.co/n7J3lQ90Xx
— Steven DeKnight (@stevendeknight) February 10, 2021
The idea of Pacific Rim crossing over with the MonsterVerse sounds awesome on paper, and technically it still isn’t completely out of the question. For example, if Godzilla vs. Kong were to result in the widespread destruction of humanity, theoretically the next outing for the MonsterVerse could introduce the Jaeger program in its infancy without even having to mention the Breach at all, or MechaGodzilla could even be retconned as the first ever model. But whether Legendary would go for it is another question altogether.