Guillermo Del Toro Envisioned Charlie Day As The Villain Of 'Pacific Rim 2'

We still don't know whether Pacific Rim will ever get a sequel, but Guillermo del Toro's been dreaming up plotlines for one since way before the first film ever opened. Now star Charlie Day's revealed a tantalizing tidbit about one of the director's many ideas.

According to Day, his nerdy scientist character Newt Geiszler was originally supposed to be the villain of Pacific Rim 2. Whether Del Toro's still considering the idea is unclear, but Day seems to have other hopes for his character, anyway. Hit the jump to see what he said.

I remember when I first met with [Del Toro] that he liked the idea of Newt becoming a bit of a villain in the second film. But, I think over the course of making the film, and the way the character resonated with the audience, I don't think he would want to turn him into a villain now, but I really have no idea.

Nerdy Newt didn't seem like much of a threat to anyone in the first movie, but the thought of him being the bad guy in the next movie makes some amount of sense. As a kaiju groupie, his perspective on the war is probably somewhat different from those of his Jaeger program colleagues.

However, del Toro's mile-a-minute thought process may have put an end to that potential plotline. "Guillermo is one of these guys that his mind is so active that he might have an idea about something and then it's a completely different idea five minutes later," Day said.

Still, the star hopes Newt and his fellow scientist Hermann Gottleib (Burn Gorman) will get some exciting moments in the next film.

I'm hopeful that we get to drive a big punching robot. I think traditionally in those comics, sometimes the science guys put together a cheap, dorky version of one of the robots so maybe we'll get to do something like that.

But first things first, Pacific Rim has to do well enough to earn a sequel. Day admits that that's still a big question mark. "We'll see," he said. "Look, I would love to do it. Hopefully if it keeps performing this well overseas we'll get to find out."

What do you want to see from Newt in the next film?