Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim 2" has been confirmed, but he has a couple of things to do before getting behind the camera.

In a Wednesday interview with Collider, del Toro revealed that he will start pre-production on "Pacific Rim 2," the sequel to the 2013 film starring Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba and Charlie Day, in August. Before he starts filming the movie, however, he will shoot an unrelated "very small" and "really, really bizarre" black-and-white film.

"We start pre-production on 'Pacific Rim 2' ... and then I interrupt it briefly to go into the first of next year to do this strange little movie, and then I restart it and go all the way until we start shooting 'Pacific Rim 2' at the end of 2015 for release in 2017," del Toro said.

The director is considering John Hurt ("V for Vendetta") and a "not well-known" actress he saw in a short film for the cast and hinted that it has "one great creature in it."

In preparation for the release of "Pacific Rim 2," scheduled for April 7, 2017, according to Variety, there will be a "Pacific Rim" cartoon. Del Toro has already spoken to "Japanese companies for the animation" as well showrunners with a "strong animation background" and writers, he told Collider.

"It's a great setup and a link between the first movie and the second movie," del Toro said. "It really enhances the mythology of the characters; we have cameos of characters from the first movie, but mostly it's a new set of characters: new jaegers, except for one or two, [and] new kaijus."

The 13-episode cartoon series will have an overarching story arc and focus on pilots, "functional" jaegers and a group of young characters.

"I really want to explore things that are complimentary to the things that I want to explore in the second movie: drift, what drifting does to you, what is needed to drift ... but also the jaeger technology, the kaijus being evolved, ideas about the precursors -- the guys that control the kaijus," del Toro said. "I don't want it to be weekly adventures. I don't want it to be like Chapter One is a little action thing, and it gets resolved in 40 minutes or an hour and then the next episode, [it's like] nothing happened."

The "Pacific Rim" animated series has no release date or network.
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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