With Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnum locked down as the lead of Guillermo del Toro‘s sci-fi monster epic Pacific Rim, the search to fill out the cast continues. The Wrap has learned that Idris Elba, the fantastic actor from The Wire and most recently Thor, is being pursued by Legendary Pictures for the film.
There is no mention of what role he may take, but we know Hunnum will play a pilot of one of the mechas in the war. Considering the large scope, I assume Elba, if cast, plays another soldier in the mission. The actor was also rumored to be circling the lead role in Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained, with Will Smith also in the running. Based off a specific tweet, could Rim be the project he was actually talking about? With production for both gearing up this fall, we’ll find out soon enough.
Check out a more detailed synopsis below for Rim, involving the two worlds found in the film.
The first is an alternate version of Earth in the near future, decades after a historic date in November 2012 when the first kaiju, a towering Godzilla-like beast, emerged from a hole in the Pacific Ocean and attacked the city of Osaka, Japan. The second is “The Anteverse,” another universe on the other side of that gaping portal, 5 miles below our ocean’s surface. Since the first attack, the rim has been “spitting out” a variety of gigantic monsters at an increasing rate, which then stride out of the ocean and begin destroying sea-bordering cities, like Tokyo and Los Angeles. In order to combat these monstrous, otherworldly menaces, the military developed the “Jaeger” program, which trains teams of two pilots to jointly operate massive, building-sized mechanized suits of armor and high-tech weaponry.
Elba has shown more than enough acting chops from his Stringer Bell days, but his feature film career has been a bit disappointing. He has Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus with Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron coming up, as well as the Crank directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor‘s likely delightfully insane Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance with Nicolas Cage.
What do you think about Elba possibly joining the cast? Would you rather see him in this or as Django?