So we know that Legendary Pictures has greenlit Pacific Rim 2, with a release date of April 7, 2017. But now Guillermo del Toro has announced that he’s planning to make a third Pacific Rim movie which will continue immediately from the conclusion of Pacific Rim 2.

In an interview with Collider, del Toro confirmed that the first draft of the Pacific Rim 2 script is now complete, and he expects to begin pre-production on the film August or September 2015, with shooting to take place toward the end of the year in November and December.

However, Pacific Rim 2 is going to be a “different experience” from the first film. Del Toro said:

“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.”

This makes it sound like Pacific Rim 2 will end with a cliffhanger to be resolved in Pacific Rim 3. However, as long as the experience still involves giant robots fighting giant alien sea monsters, I think we’ll be okay. There will also be an animated series leading up to Pacific Rim 2, so it looks like the franchise will be expanding in all directions.

Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori

As for which characters return for PacRim 2, del Toro hasn’t been specific, but here’s hoping that Mako Mori (played by Rinko Kikuchi) will feature with more story arc and development. After all, she has her own version of the Bechdel Test to pass.

Pacific Rim 3 has not been greenlit yet, so perhaps it’s appropriate to be cautiously optimistic. After all, Hellboy 3 got nixed, and sometimes less is more: just because something is successful as a standalone movie doesn’t mean that it should be expanded into a trilogy (I’m looking at you, Matrix).

Pacific Rim made three times as much at the international box office as it did domestically.