It has already been confirmed that there will be a second Pacific Rim film but director Guillermo del Toro recently revealed that there will actually be a third film as well. Del Toro told Collider that he is working with screenwriter Zak Penn currently on the sequel AND the sequel after that.
“The direction we’re going in is very different from the first. All I can say is some of your favorite characters come back, some others don’t because we have decided that we’re going to shoot ambitiously and say ‘Let’s hope we have three movies,’’so some characters come in at the end of the second, hoping that it will ramp up on the third one. I hope people like it but you’re gonna get a very different experience from the first one.”
I hope when he says “some of your favorite characters will be back” that he means Newt! Del Toro did not reveal any of the plot details for the third installment. In regards to Pacific Rim 2, he said,
“We got the first draft of the movie now, and we are going to spend another 4-5 months on the screenplay before we start pre-production,” del Toro confirmed. “We start pre-production next year in August-September and start shooting November-December next year.”
Pacific Rim 2 will release in theaters on April 7, 2017. That puts the third film release WAY ahead likely sometime in late 2019 or 2020.