Despite the good word of mouth from people who’ve seen it, Pacific Rim hasn’t been doing well at the box office, at least not here. But it is apparently doing well foreign, which is crucial for a movie to break even. The overseas box office was so important to Pacific Rim, Warner Brothers made Guillermo Del Toro convert it to 3D, or China wouldn’t play it.
As The Wrap tells us, Pacific Rim has made a paltry $84 million in the States, and may eventually limp to $100 million, which doesn’t cut it in this day and age. But overseas it’s already raked in $140 million, and could hit $300 million if it continues to grow, and it could also mean it’s made enough money for a sequel to go forward.
Similarly, Tron Legacy didn’t do enormous numbers, but it did well enough world-wide that development on a sequel was given the go-ahead. Del Toro has been very hopeful, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “We started thinking about a sequel when we got a great response from the first cut that we showed to an audience. We have plans that are pretty bold and pretty crazy. We would not be repeating anything from the first one. We would go to completely fresh territory.”
In the meantime, word of mouth on Pacific Rim continues to grow, and perhaps it will have a major second life in DVD / BluRay / Streaming. A lot of people still wait until a movie’s ready to stream instead of going to the theater, so here’s hoping Pacific Rim can eventually find its audience. It takes some movies a while to catch on, and maybe the world will eventually catch up to Pacific Rim somewhere down the road.
