Godzilla has never been one for queueing, and on 3 November he walked straight to the front of the Japanese record books. Toho and GKIDS say Godzilla Minus Zero took ¥910 million (roughly $5.75m) on its opening day in Japan, from more than 590,000 admissions. They call it the biggest opening day ever for a live-action film in Japan, domestic or foreign. Every Hollywood blockbuster that ever crossed the Pacific with a marketing budget the size of Osaka has just been flattened by a lizard born in 1954.
Toho also puts the figure at a 201% increase on Godzilla Minus One‘s opening day. That is no small feat, since Minus One went on to win an Oscar and persuade a good part of the Western world that subtitled kaiju films were prestige cinema. Not every number agrees: Koimoi, citing unnamed media reports, has the day at a more modest $4.1m, so treat the dollar conversions with care and the yen with respect. Koimoi also reports a 4.1-star Japanese audience score, the highest any Godzilla film has managed, and early estimates of around $10m for the six-day opening stretch. Those are estimates, not actuals.
Today it’s America’s turn. GKIDS opens the film across North America on 6 November, and the final trailer, released on 5 November, confirms what anyone who saw the director’s shoes at the Ginza premiere had already guessed: King Ghidorah is in it. Takashi Yamazaki, who writes and directs and supervises the effects himself, has given Godzilla the one opponent that can bite him three times at once. Ghidorah has three heads, two enormous wings and no sense of proportion, and 1949 Japan, still rebuilding after the first film, has done nothing to deserve him.
Trailer not playing? Watch it on YouTube.
Something rather larger, at least in budget terms, is opening on the next screen. Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana: Rise of a Legend is the first half of a two-part adaptation produced by DNEG’s Namit Malhotra and released globally with Sony Pictures. Its reported budget of around ₹4,000 crore across both parts has earned it the title of India’s most expensive film. Ranbir Kapoor plays Rama, Sai Pallavi plays Sita and Yash plays Ravana. Hans Zimmer and A.R. Rahman share the music, and the reported running time is three hours and 15 minutes, so take a cushion. Early trade estimates put its first-day net in India at Rs 64.85 crore. The Sunday Guardian reports the North American start came in below expectations but gives no figure. Part Two is pencilled in for Diwali 2027.
Trailer not playing? Watch it on YouTube.
For a genre readership, the Ramayana is simply one of the world’s great epic fantasies, a couple of thousand years older than anything Tolkien wrote. It has flying chariots, shape-shifting demons, a monkey army building a bridge to Lanka and a demon king with ten heads, which rather puts Ghidorah’s three in perspective. (If you want the source first, we reviewed Arshia Sattar’s illustrated retelling some time ago.)
Deadline’s weekend preview has Godzilla Minus Zero eyeing a $60m worldwide opening and reckons Ramayana “could explode”. That is tracking, not takings, but it is very good tracking for a film with subtitles and no superheroes. What is already clear is where this weekend’s big-screen spectacle comes from: Tokyo and Mumbai, while Hollywood’s main new wide release is The Cat in the Hat. We still can’t find a confirmed UK date for Minus Zero, so British kaiju fans will have to make do with the trailer and a strong cup of tea for now.
Weekend actuals arrive on Monday. Our money is on the lizard in America, the prince in India, and Dr Seuss’s cat wondering where everybody went.
Join the conversation (0)