Well, the viral campaign has started, the first trailer should be dropping later this month, and even it's not due until next summer, in the movie world that doesn't matter as developmenet on "Pacific Rim 2" is already under way. It was just a few weeks ago that the first rumblings of a followup surfaced, and now it's confirmed that work is starting.
THR reports that Travis Beacham, who penned "Pacific Rim," will team with Guillermo Del Toro to co-write the sequel. “We certainly started tossing ideas for possibilities of a sequel and [writer] Travis Beacham and I are writing a proposal of ideas, but at the same time I know I don’t want to do that next," Del Toro said in November."I want to do something else, I want to do something in a different genre that’s not so big." And indeed, Del Toro just yesterday signed to direct the haunted house movie "Crimson Peak," confirming it will be his next feature film with a January 2014 start being eyed. So even if "Pacific Rim" is a monster hit (ha) don't expect the followup right way.
But the whole point of his exercise is so that the pieces are in place so that if the movie is a big success, material is ready to get sequel going whenever Del Toro is ready to go (presuming he directs, which he isn't comitted to just yet). It's just trying to stay one step ahead. And if the movie underperforms? No big loss except what it costs for Beacham and Del Toro's time, which in the ledger sheet for tentpole, is probably a fraction of the expenses. But before we get to "Pacific Rim 2," the first movie will land on shores on July 12, 2013.