Guillermo Del Toro's 'Pacific Rim' Adds Rob Kazinsky, Willem Dafoe In Talks

Earlier this year, some personal issue caused the actor Rob Zazinsky to drop out of Peter Jackson's two Hobbit films. But things are looking up, and slightly ironic to boot, because he's now cast in former Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro's new film, Pacific Rim. And if things go well, he'll be joined by Willem Dafoe, too.

Variety says that Rob Kazinsky is signed and sealed for the film, in which he'll play " a member of the team trying to defeat the [monstrous alien] invaders," while Willem Dafoe, should he sign his deal, would be "a rogue scientist with expertise on alien creatures." Done and done.

Already cast are Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba, Charlie Day and, just added a day ago, Max Martini.

This is as good a place as any to recap comments the director made about Pacific Rim at the Legendary Pictures panel a week ago at Comic Con. If you missed our coverage of that, here's the good stuff:

Guillermo del Toro said, "It is my duty to film the finest f***ing monsters ever committed to the screen. And the greatest f***ing robots ever committed to screen. That's a pledge." He also added that the film will feature "giant f***ing monsters against giant f***ing robots," just in case you didn't get the point. Also involved is the idea of having "incredibly huge things destroy little things."

Finally, he explained,

There's much more to it than the giant monsters and giant robots. We want to make it a big what if: what would happen in the real world if a twenty-five story thing came out of the sea and started destroying cities? How would the world change? What weapons do we need to develop to fight a thing like that? It's not a fantastic distant future to which we have no relationship. We wanted to make it in the now.

He elaborated on that just a bit. "Everything as geeks and fans we ask ourselves about giant monsters and kaiju I wanted to answer in the movie. We created a whole world around that one giant variable. This will not be a movie that has only spectacle and scope."