The film took place in a near future where humans had engineered sky-scraping piloted robots (known as Jaeger) to fight back against Kaiju invading our world through a breach in the Pacific Ocean.
While Pacific Rim was designed to kick-off a franchise, it ultimately took five years to get the sequel, Pacific Rim Uprising, off the ground.
Along the way, del Toro dropped out as the writer-director and interest in the Pacific Rimproperty seemed to wane in general. In the end, Uprising earned lukewarm reviews and disappointed at the box office, all but killing Pacific Rim 3's chances of happening in the process.
However, some eight months later, Netflix surprised everyone by announcing plans for a Pacific Rim anime series. More recently, at Project Anime, Legendary Entertainment executive Elie Dekel revealed that the show will debut in 2020 and has already been renewed for a second season ahead of time.
According to IGN, Dekel described the project as "one of the biggest budget anime series I’ve had the pleasure of working on" at the presentation, before adding that "I think that speaks to the commitment of Netflix and Legendary [to the show]".
Those with long memories may recall that del Toro once had plans to make a Pacific Rimanimated TV show that would bridge the gap between the first and second movie. By comparison, the anime will follow a pair of siblings who pilot an abandoned Jaeger in an effort to locate their missing parents.
The series is being run by Craig Kyle and Greg Johnson, whose previous credits include the Marvel cartoon series Wolverine and The X-Menand X-Men: Evolution.
Considering how much the original Pacific Rimwas clearly influenced by classic anime (specifically, animated Mecha series like Super Dimension Force Macross), it's all the more fitting that the franchise is now becoming an anime itself.
Netflix is also working on an Altered Carbon anime, as part of an effort to expand its original content library in that department. Both of these properties have wielded mixed results in terms of quality and viewership up to this point, but seems like the kind of sci-fi IPs that ought to translate smoothly into anime.