The future of Pacific Rim 2 has been in question for a while. Director Guillermo del Toro had to drop out, but was then replaced by Daredevil Season 1 director Steven S. DeKnight. There’s been shifts of when or if it would go into production… fans were losing hope.

Today, it’s looking like we’ve got some pretty big news about the film. It’s now been confirmed that John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), has just signed on to star in the film. All we know so far is that he’ll be plying the son of Idris Elba’s character from the first film. There’s no word about any of the original film returning as of yet.

With the film gearing up for production at the end of this year, we’ll hopefully start to hear more shortly.