John Boyega has posted an image showing his character in the upcoming 'Pacific Rim: Uprising'.

John Boyega (c) Instagram

John Boyega (c) Instagram

The 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' actor revealed the poster - released by Legendary Pictures and Universal Studios - on his Instagram account which also featured revealed the sequel is set for a March 2018 release.

Boyega, 20, captioned the image: "Up next! (sic)"

The original 2013 film was set in the future when Earth is at war with the colossal monsters Kaiju who appeared at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean through an interdimensional portal.

To defeat the monsters, humans created gigantic humanoid mechas called Jaegers and follows the story of Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) who comes out of retirement to stop the monsters.

'Pacific Rim: Uprising' is set 10 years after The Battle of the Breach and the Jaeger program has evolved inot a powerful global defence force and when the Kaiju return, the best and brightest have to team up to become the next generation of heroes.

Hunnam, 37, is not returning as Beckett in the anticipated sequel and blamed the "rapid" turnaround for 'Pacific Rim: Uprising' as the reason for his character not being in the movie.

He said the reason he couldn't reprise his role in the upcoming sequel was because Legendary Entertainment - the studio that made the movie and was subsequently bought by Chinese company Wanda - wanted to make the movie "very rapidly", when the star was already committed to the prison movie 'Papillon'.

Despite the scheduling crisis, Hunnam insists there's no bad blood between himself and the team at Legendary, and has thanked them for letting him out of his contract so he could focus on 'Papillon'.

In the upcoming sequel, Boyega stars alongside Scott Eastwood, Jing Tian, Wesley Wong, Lily Ji, Lan Yingying, Qian Yongchen, Zhang Jin and Cailee Spaeny and Chen Zitong.

The film will be directed by Steven S. DeKnight and is based around the creation of Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham.