28 Weeks Later’s Idris Elba is wanted for Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

Idris Elba is making a name for himself in a big way. While we genre fans are inclined to associate him with 28 WEEKS LATER, the actor most recently appeared in the blockbuster THOR. He recently wrapped production on GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE, he’s currently filming Ridely Scott’s PROMETHEUS and it’s rumored that he’s in talks to appear in Quentin Tarantino’s DJANGO UNCHAINED.

Where do you go from there? Guillermo del Toro’s PACIFIC RIM, of course! The Wrap reports that the folks over at Legendary Pictures are interested in having the actor in the picture. Nothing is confirmed, but I’d love to see Elba continue appearing in badass genre flicks. What about you?

The latest effort from del Toro is a futuristic flick with plenty of monsters. The script is written by Travis Beacham (CLASH OF THE TITANS). Charlie Hunnam is signed on to star. Here is the lengthy synopsis:

The film will take place place in two worlds: The first is an alternate version of Earth in the near future, decades after a historic date in November 2012 when the first kaiju, a towering Godzilla-like beast, emerged from a hole in the Pacific Ocean and attacked the city of Osaka, Japan. The second is “The Anteverse,” another universe on the other side of that gaping portal, 5 miles below our ocean’s surface.

Since the first attack, the rim has been “spitting out” a variety of gigantic monsters at an increasing rate, which then stride out of the ocean and begin destroying sea-bordering cities, like Tokyo and Los Angeles. In order to combat these monstrous, otherworldly menaces, the military developed the “Jaeger” program, which trains teams of two pilots to jointly operate massive, building-sized mechanized suits of armor and high-tech weaponry. Within the first act alone, we are given enough detailed background on the god-like Jaeger systems, its shared neural piloting system (called “pons”), and the relentless beasts. But Beacham is an absolute master at immediately establishing characters and their conflicts.

The central character is Raleigh Antrobus, 23, a skilled Jaeger pilot still wrestling emotionally with the loss of his co-pilot and biological brother, Yance, during a mission a year earlier. The ordeal has wreaked havoc on his mind spirit, leaving him with ghostly nightmares of the battle from the shared “pons” experience. After the initial setup, the damaged hero is recruited to re-join the task force in Tokyo, where pilots are in demand, and team with a fellow “leftover,” 22-year-old female Japanese pilot Mako Mori. Naturally, the language barrier (among other things) presents an issue for the out-of-sync duo, meaning an even steeper learning curve for the unprecedented pairing.

Meanwhile, Felicity “Flick” Kincaid, a journalist and Yance’s former fiancée, circles the globe to discover answers about this mysterious rift and the origins of its intensifying threat.

28 WEEKS LATER’s Rose Byrne