By It’s pretty clear by now that despite a solid international box office Godzilla: King of Monsters didn’t perform nearly as well as Legendary and Warner Bros. was hoping. I’m sure the studio saw a burgeoning cinematic universe after Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island did so well, but despite decent reviews the King of Monsters only opened at expectations and saw a 67% decline week-to-week. Not so good and that means that WB is evidently taking a pause on next year’s sequel, Godzilla vs. King Kong.
Speaking at an event with Deadline, Warner Bros. Studio chairman Toby Emmerich said, “[the sequel] will deliver for fans in the way they were looking for. It might come out later in the year, so we can deliver an A+ movie.”
Sounds to me like they’re reworking some things for the film so that they can do re-shoots. The question is what changes do they want to make? Sure, King of Monsters plot was dumb as bricks but the monster on monster action was fantastic, and it was just plain fun. Changing the plot or screenplay isn’t going to fix what seems to be a general disinterest in monster movies. I have no idea what the disinterest is because all three of the films so far have been an absolute blast to watch, but they definitely don’t want another domestic disappointment on their hands. Then again, maybe they’ll just reshoot a bunch of scenes with Japanese and Chinese actors in a hopes of making those box offices even larger, and forgetting the U.S. market.
This also might be some course correction. King of Monsters was itself delayed, so pushing back Godzilla vs. Kong‘s release is actually just returning the larger gap to the release schedule. If you’re worried about fatigue of a franchise then that makes total sense.
At the moment Godzilla vs. Kong will land on March 30, 2020.
