Pacific Rim: Maelstrom is continuing to cast up, and today the Monsters v Robots sequel has set its sights on a leading lady. Variety reports newcomer Cailee Spaeny, a young American actress and pop singer, will star opposite John Boyega as the female lead in the follow-up to Guillermo del Toro's 2013 action epic. In addition to Spaeny and Boyega, who plays the son of Idris Elba's heroic Stacker Pentecost from the first film, Scott Eastwood is set to star in an unknown role with Daredevil Season 1 showrunner Steven S. DeKnight taking over for del Toro as director.

So far, none of the film's original cast, which included Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Robert Kazinsky and Ron Perlman, is confirmed to return and indeed, Pacific Rim lead Charlie Hunnam recently said he would sit the sequel out. However, recent quotes from del Toro seem pretty confident that a few of our favorite Kaiju-slaying heroes would return, saying "I can tell you this — a lot of the cast from the first movie is coming back."

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Image via Warner Bros.

This is a breakout role for Spaeny, who has so far only appeared in the indie thriller Counting to 1,000. Character details for Spaeny and Eastwood's roles remain a mystery at this point, but it is interesting that the new cast seems pretty resolutely aged down from what we saw in the first film. Production on Maelstrom is slated to begin this November (so expect a lot more casting announcements in the coming months) in Australia, with a portion of filming also taking place in China. The film is scheduled to land in theaters on February 23, 2018.

For more on Pacific Rim 2, check out our latest coverage in the links below.

pacific-rim
Image via Warner Bros.
pacific-rim
Image via Warner Bros.
pacific-rim
Image via Warner Bros.