Godzilla Minus One opened with $11.4m in the US. Can its sequel open with $28m?
Godzilla Minus Zero, a sequel in Japanese, opens in North American cinemas on 6 November. The first film opened with $11.4m.
What happened
Toho chief Matsuoka Hiro said releasing Godzilla Minus One in the US itself brought the studio profit. The sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero, opens in North America on .
Godzilla Minus Zero opens in North American cinemas on . It is made by the Japanese studio Toho. It follows Godzilla Minus One, which opened in with more than $11.4 million, the biggest US start for a foreign film that year.
Toho’s label GKIDS will distribute the film across North America beginning November 6.
Deadline,
Minus One cost $15 million to make and took over $100 million around the world. It won the Oscar for visual effects in 2024. In North America it took $57.1 million, five times its first weekend.
The new film cost more than the first. It is the first Japanese film certified as Filmed for Imax, a format for extra-large cinema screens. On it had a score of 92% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes, from 50 reviews.
Minus One was rated PG-13 in the US. Minus Zero is rated R. Director Takashi Yamazaki said the rating “might seem like a barrier to entry”, but cutting scenes “was just not an option for me”.
Toho bought the US film company GKIDS in 2024 and releases Minus Zero through it. On Toho chief Matsuoka Hiro said releasing Minus One itself “brought the profit to us”.
Six other films open widely on the same Friday, including The Cat in the Hat from Warner Bros. By no forecast of the opening weekend had been published, and Box Office Mojo showed no cinema count.
Sources: Deadline (2), The Hollywood Reporter, Variety (2, 3, 4), Box Office Mojo (2, 3, 4)
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a film in a language other than English got a sequel that opened in at least 600 cinemas in North America, and the first film had also played there. We found ten such sequels from 2021 to 2026. For each one we compared the sequel’s first Friday-to-Sunday weekend with the first film’s.
Show the other 8 cases
The Read
$28 million would be 2.45 times what Minus One took in its first weekend. Four of the ten sequels did that or better: Ne Zha 2, Pushpa 2, Singham Again and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle. Each of the four also opened in at least twice as many cinemas as the film before it. Seven of the ten opened bigger than the first film, and three opened smaller.
There are reasons for doubt. Minus One already opened in 2,308 cinemas, while the widest first film among the ten opened in 1,614, so twice as wide would now mean more than 4,600 cinemas. Minus One also kept selling for months and finished at five times its first weekend, more than any first film here. Most of the ten were Japanese animated films or Indian films, and several were shown dubbed into English as well as with subtitles. Reports so far mention only subtitles for Minus Zero.
Sources: Box Office Mojo (2, 3), Deadline (2)
Disclaimer
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