Bad timing could affect Guillermo del Toro project

ELAINE: A big coincidence.

RAVA: Not a big coincidence. A coincidence!

ELAINE: No, that's a big coincidence.

RAVA: That's what a coincidence is! There are no small coincidences and big coincidences!

ELAINE: No, there are degrees of coincidences.

RAVA: No, there are only coincidences! ..Ask anyone! (Enraged, she asks everyone in the elevator) Are there big coincidences and small coincidences, or just coincidences? (Silent) ..Well?! Well?!..

--- Scene from the “Seinfeld” episode entitled “The Statue”

Fate can work in strange ways, particularly in relation to man-made and natural disasters. The Kristin Hersch-led rock group 50-Foot Wave received an inordinate amount of attention when their first album came out weeks after the infamous 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. The original version of the Cole Porter musical “Anything Goes” was overhauled shortly after it premiered due to the 1934 shipwreck of the SS Morro Castle. “Collateral Damage”, an action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was delayed from its release due to the 9/11 attacks and the finished product did not include a scene with Sofia Vergara playing an airplane hijacker.

On the same day as a deadly earthquake and tsunami Japan details emerged of the possible plot of a film directed by Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro called “Pacific Rim”. The coincidence between the real event and the purported plot of the “Japan-based disaster film” is hair-raising:

Pacific Rim is set in a world where, in November 2012, giant monsters began emerging from a hole in the Pacific Ocean and wreaking havoc on Japan, leaving the nation devastated, and all but wiping out the population. The film mostly takes place some decades later, when the only hope for the “leftovers” are giant battling robots commanded by young pilots, two of whom will head through the monsters’ portal to find the “Anteverse” and fight them there at the source.

The movie is reported to be “in development” and planned for release next year; thus, there is ample time for any modifications to the movie’s script. Though as Sean O’Neal pointed out in The A.V. Club “if we were del Toro, we’d probably be feeling a little squeamish about hitting the storyboards today.”

Del Toro reportedly agreed to go behind the lens for “Pacific Rim” a few days before the disaster in Japan.

“Degrees of coincidence” indeed.

Image- deadline.com
Online Sources- 24 Frames, The Black Table, BBC, imdb.com, The A.V. Club, seinfeldscripts.com