I asked this question a few months ago in reference to Ready Player One and I think it’s worth considering for Pacific Rim: Uprising as well because–while premiering domestically March 23rd means it will avoid the box office tsunami known as Black Panther–you have to wonder how much interest there is in the project.

Keep in mind the original movie’s only saving grace–in terms of box office receipts–was its performance in China, since it underwhelmed domestically.

For reasons I don’t claim to understand there doesn’t seem to be much demand at the moment for giant robot movies (a reality that has caught up with the Transformers movies as well–finally–seeing that Transformers: The Last Knight failed to set the domestic box office on fire as well).

Steven DeKnight is a capable director though but I don’t know what he brings to the project that a brilliant director like Guillermo Del Toro couldn’t, which is problematic.

Though to be fair, the original Pacific Rim was a passion project for Del Toro; perhaps DeKnight’s distance from the project may help DeKnight bring something to the project that Del Toro could not.

Or maybe, while I don’t believe that superhero fatigue is a real thing, perhaps giant robot fatigue is.

We’ll find out later this month.