While it has been said that the studio is in no hurry to make a sequel to ‘Pacific Rim’, director Guillermo del Toro is already working on it despite not getting an official green light yet. Previously, he was working with the co-writer of the first film Travis Beacham, but it looks like there’s been a line-up change.

According to an interview with Buzzfeed to promote his upcoming FX television series ‘The Strain’, del Toro revealed that he’s now working with screenwriter Zak Penn on the script due to Beacham’s commitments to Fox’s new show ‘Hieroglyph’. He also alludes to the fact that Legendary Pictures hasn’t signed on for anything yet, but they’re pushing forward anyway:

“I’m working very, very hard with Zak Penn. We’ve been working for a few months now in secret. We found a way to twist it around. Travis Beacham was involved in the storyline and now I’m writing with Zak because Travis has become a TV mogul.”

You might recognize Penn’s name from his work on some of the biggest superhero movies of the modern day like ‘The Avengers’, ‘The Incredible Hulk’, and ‘X2’. He also wrote ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, but everyone has an off day, so we won’t hold that against him because of what he did afterwards. Now that we know who’s writing ‘Pacific Rim 2’, the question remains about the story. Previously, rumors circulated about the film being a prequel, but the director assures us that we will be following Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori after the events of the first movie:

“Some people were wondering if we were going to do the prequel. I was never interested in doing that first wave of invasion. I’m going for very new, very crazy ideas on the second one, which are very different from the first one — but you will get really great spectacle.”

Knowing del Toro’s work, we’re definitely in for some epic new monsters causing some heavy-duty damage whenever this sequel hits theaters, but hopefully we get equally awesome jaegers to fight them as well. After all, I think it’s safe to say that the fans want more of Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi kicking ass in giant robots. And regardless of his temporary hiccup with the ‘X-Men’ franchise, Penn can certainly form an interesting and engaging story around all that action.

What do you think about Zak Penn working with Guillermo del Toro on the sequel to ‘Pacific Rim?’ Are you excited to see the next chapter of the director’s Kaiju vs. Jaegers blockbuster? Let us know in the comments below.