Godzilla Gets Another Shot at Box Office Domination This Weekend
by EG
After settling for third place at the box office last weekend, Godzilla Minus One gets another chance this weekend. The two movies that beat out Godzilla last week, Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, are likely to see a steep fall-off in ticket sales this week, leaving the well-reviewed Godzilla to show what it can do with less stiff competition. So far, the movie is North America's highest-grossing live action Japanese movie, and it may be able to build on that success in its second weekend. Read on for details.
Via Deadline.
Godzilla Minus One, now at $14.36 million at the box office, has stomped into a record — it’s now the highest grossing live-action Japanese film in North America. This follows an opening weekend that marked the biggest Stateside debut of a foreign film this year.
Distributor Toho International said it’s been adding screens this week due to marketplace demand. It will be playing the film by Takashi Yamazaki in 2,540 locations (up from 2,308).
Godzilla Minus One made over $11.4 million at its North America opening, beating Godzilla 2000: Millennium ($10 million) and current title-holder The Adventures of Milo & Otis (a comedy adventure with orange tabby cat Milo and pug Otis), which grossed $14.1 million in 1989 and a 1990 re-release.
It’s certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes at 97% with critics and 98% with audiences.
The biggest foreign opening this year was Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, which opened to $10.1 million in March.
Yamazaki also wrote the screenplay and served as director of VFX. “I am happy that Godzilla, of all characters, has eclipsed a record that had not been broken for a long time. Looking back, I think that the cast and crew were all working on the film with the same goal in mind: to make something entertaining! That is what led to such a wonderful result. I will always remember this,” he said in a statement provided by Toho.
The film is set in post-World War II Japan as a devastated nation must contend with a new crisis in the form of a giant monster. It opened this year’s Tokyo Film Festival.
“Toho’s iconic movie monster Godzilla remains a screen idol some 70 years after first appearing in theaters,” said Comscore’s Paul Degarabedian.
Get the rest of the story at Deadline.