Godzilla may be King of the Monsters, but today he is the King of Hollywood. After a worldwide weekend haul of $196 million, is it any surprise that Legendary Pictures and Warner Brothers are moving forward with the continuing adventures of everyone's favorite giant lizard? Today, the companies announced that they have already begun the development phase for the sequel.
The announcement of a sequel comes as a welcome relief to the executives and the creative team, who had an awfully big hill to climb in the wake of last year's underperforming Pacific Rim, which never caught on with critics or audiences alike and the much maligned 1998 Roland Emmerich version, which only took in $398 million, paltry and anemic by today's standards. Godzilla's new adventure, which pits him against a pair of radiation eating super-monsters, is well on its way to taking in more than that.
"You can't ask for a better situation when you have a group of people, who were perhaps expecting to be let down, being impressed," chief creative officer John Jashni of Legendary Pictures told Variety.
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Director Gareth Edwards, who has been praised for his use of scale and incredible eye for framing, has had ambitions for a sequel for a while, all of which hopefully involve Mothra. Or at the very least King Ghidorah. He has not been tapped to direct the sequel, but that announcement should follow shortly as his vision and restraint were integral to the financial success of the movie.
You can catch Godzilla in 2D and 3D in theaters now. If you see one movie in IMAX, make it this one.
