Godzilla won the box office this weekend, but not just any Godzilla. Hollywood has adapted the monster tale several times to scattershot results (Roland Emmerich meh, Gareth Edwards better), but it was the Japanese Godzilla that ruled the weekend as Toho’s “Godzilla Minus Zero” brought in $31.6 million at the domestic box office.
Director Takashi Yamazaki’s film is a sequel to his critically acclaimed 2023 film “Godzilla Minus One,” which shockingly won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and grossed $116 million worldwide on a $10 million budget.
The success of “Godzilla Minus Zero,” which is set in 1949 and finds Japan battling monsters while trying to rebuild after World War II, is largely to do with harnessing the acclaim and success of that prior film, which became a surprise box office hit in 2023.
What sets these Godzilla movies apart from Warner Bros. and Legendary’s Americanized Godzilla movies is their focus on theme and character, as opposed to just spectacle for spectacle’s sake. Hence the glowing reviews.
Now prepared for the enthusiasm for this corner of the franchise, Toho released “Godzilla Minus Zero” through its GKids label in America, leaning into the film’s IMAX scale (it’s the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX) to stunning results.
In addition to positive audience and critics’ scores, “Godzilla Minus Zero” was a massive hit with large formats — a whopping 74% of ticket sales opening weekend were for PLFs. $12.7 million of its opening weekend came from IMAX screens. That is big.
This is a resounding success for a monster movie with a $13 million budget, and eyes will certainly be on whether the film can replicate the last movie’s awards season run.
Now, on to the rest as we tackle what’s going on with Skydance animation, Bond casting, Bill Hader’s first movie as a director and more in this week’s newsletter.
‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ Sets GKids Box Office Record With $31 Million Opening
GKids, the American film distributor subsidiary of Toho, has set a new company box office record with the opening weekend of “Godzilla Minus Zero” from 3,254 locations.
The $31.6 million opening is nearly triple the $11.4 million opening of the kaiju sequel’s December 2023 predecessor “Godzilla Minus One” and makes it the fourth non-English film to reach No. 1 on the U.S. weekend box office charts. The film has also made $31 million overseas, including $17 million in its home country of Japan.
For GKids, this passes the $13 million opening record it set in 2023 with Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron.” It is also the second-highest opening for a live-action non-English film behind only “The Passion of the Christ,” which was performed in Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic and opened to $83 million in 2004.
Taking second is Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s “The Cat in the Hat” with a $20.5 million domestic and $30.5 million global opening. While on par with studio projections, it is well shy of the $67.5 million opening of Universal/Illumination’s “The Grinch” from the same early November release slot in 2018.
It’s another uphill battle for Warner Bros. to turn a theatrical profit as the $92 million-budgeted Dr. Seuss adaptation will have to lean on strong reception from family audiences to leg out in the weeks ahead and build up interest among parents and kids ahead of Thanksgiving, when it will face competition from Disney’s “Hexed.”
The film has an A on CinemaScore with its highest marks coming from kids and from audiences over 50, the latter of whom are most familiar with Dr. Seuss’ books. Word-of-mouth from those demos will be essential to the legs of “Cat” as families get more and more time to go out to the movies over the course of November and December.
“You Can See Everything” is continuing its remarkable run with an $8.8 million fourth weekend, making it the only holdover currently in the top 5. With a cume just shy of $80 million, the acclaimed documentary is chasing the $100 million milestone that is usually only reached by music or nature documentaries like “March of the Penguins.” To date, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is the only documentary not in those categories to reach $100 million domestic.
Fathom/Laika’s “Wildwood” is in sixth with $7 million in its third weekend, bringing its domestic total to $40 million as it is set to pass the $48 million unadjusted total of Laika’s 2016 film “Kubo and the Two Strings.”
Warner Bros./DC Studios’ “Clayface” is in seventh with $6.7 million in its third weekend, bringing it to a total of $56.6 million domestic and $109 million worldwide against a $40 million budget. It’s a modest theatrical success for Warner and DC, but it is already showing signs of running out of steam at the box office. – Jeremy Fuster
The Spotlight
Can three different animation studios co-exist under one corporate owner? That’s the question facing Skydance’s Paramount Animation, Skydance Animation and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation now that the merger is complete, so Drew Taylor dug deep to find out what the plan is for these three different studios, and which ones are most likely to survive any eventual culling of the herd. Read the full story here.
New Releases
Skydance Org Chart: Who’s running which divisions at Skydance? Here’s the complete picture as of now.
Bond Casting Heats Up: Robert Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult have entered the 007 contenders list.
Pam Abdy Lets Loose: At the Women in Film honors, former WB film co-chief Pam Abdy unleashed a fiery speech about women in Hollywood.
Earnings: AMC Theatres broke a revenue record (again), Cinemark revenue surges, IMAX sails to $175 million quarter
“Vibe” Directing?: Roger Cheng visited Disney’s Accelerator Day and saw up-close and personal how the company is prioritizing AI.
Bill Hader Speaks: I spoke to Bill Hader about his two-year break after “Barry,” directing his first movie and “Cat in the Hat.”
Making “The Cat in the Hat”: And for an even deeper dive into the animated film, read Drew Taylor’s making-of piece.
Concession Stand
Paramount will release Danny McBride’s “G.I. Joe” movie starring Bradley Cooper in 2028.
Keanu Reeves will return for an animated “John Wick” prequel film.
Lionsgate is teaming with Sony on Destin Daniel Cretton’s live-action “Naruto” movie.
Maya Hawke will anchor Legendary and Hasbro’s “Magic: The Gathering” live-action movie.
“The Odyssey” is coming back to theaters in December.
Warner Bros. and DC are developing a John Constantine movie.
Streaming Corner
- Disney’s live-action “Moana” may have been a massive flop in theaters — it only grossed $324 million worldwide — but the film topped Nielsen’s charts with its streaming debut on Disney+ in October. The movie brought in 579 million minutes viewed, according to Nielsen, during its first week streaming on Disney+, which further underlines that the Disney flywheel doesn’t just anticipate its wildly expensive movies to perform on streaming, it hinges on it. Kids 2-11 drove about one-third of the film’s watch-time, according to Nielsen.
What I’m Watching
I caught up with two 2026 releases this weekend, one out now and one still to come. Georgia Oakley’s adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility” is a gorgeous, naturalistic take on Jane Austen’s beloved story, with Daisy Edgar-Jones giving a terrific performance as Elinor. Not as good as Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 1995 adaptation, but still well worth checking out and an interesting visual twist on Austen. And Brad Bird’s passion project “Ray Gunn,” coming to Netflix over Christmas, is a visually spectacular retro-futuristic noir epic. A total blast and extremely indebted to classic noir, with a wonderful throwback score from composer Michael Giacchino.
The post How Japan’s ‘Godzilla’ Conquered the Domestic Box Office appeared first on TheWrap.