Godzilla Conquers Entertainment With Concurrent Theatrical, Streaming Strategies | Analysis

You might start noticing a lot of “Godzilla” entertainment these days.

This weekend, Japanese producer Toho released “Godzilla Minus One” in the U.S., taking in $11 million from 2,308 theaters, impressive for a Japanese-language monster saga that is the first such feature since 2016’s “Shin Godzilla.”

But cinemas are hardly the only place where U.S. fans can catch a glimpse of the radioactive dinosaur. Over at Apple TV+, the 10-episode series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” has emerged as a critically acclaimed hit following its debut on Nov. 17.

And fans got a first look at Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire,” due to be released in April, at this weekend’s CCXP fan event in Brazil.

To paraphrase this year’s Best Picture winner, Godzilla is everywhere all at once. At least it sure seems that way.

The latest Godzilla movie, distributed by Emick Media in the U.S., added its $11 million box office haul — a strong result for a subtitled Japanese film with almost no marketing — to the $23 million the film has already grossed in Japan.

Known affectionately as the “Mickey Mouse of Japan,” Godzilla is one of the world’s most sprawling entertainment franchises. Spanning 35 live-action movies over nearly 70 years — not to mention three anime-inspired animated films — the Godzilla IP universe extends to television series, comic books, video games, novels and other merchandise.

While confirmed grosses in Japan, especially for older films, are hard to clarify, the “Godzilla” film franchise is estimated to have earned more than $2.57 billion in worldwide ticket sales since 1954. That includes 100 million tickets sold for the Toho-produced titles — not counting the most recent entry — in Japan alone.

In recent years, Hollywood studio Legendary has controlled the rights to produce English-language films and television shows after acquiring them from Toho in 2010 in a multi-year deal.

As Hollywood continues to figure out how to turn every remotely successful property into a multi-media, never-ending IP content farm, Godzilla stands out as an example of a global brand whose owners and licensors have diversified the use of the character’s content to keep it interesting for new generations of moviegoers. So far, Hollywood films produced by Legendary, such as “Godzilla vs. Kong,” present Godzilla as a towering protector of Earth’s status quo (and humanity by default), while the Toho films present him or her as the terrifying destroyer of worlds.

The character’s appearance in three disparate projects in the span of five months speaks to the enduring popularity of the character — and to how Toho and its licensors have managed to stay true to its original DNA. “While there may be debates over certain preferences, considering the current popularity of the Monsterverse vs. the decades-long expansiveness of the ongoing Toho series, a genuine sense of joy is shared by all the fans simply due to having so much new Godzilla media,” film critic and noted Godzilla enthusiast Aaron Neuwirth told TheWrap.

The Legendary movies don’t seem to mitigate interest among the fans for the Toho-produced films, while Legendary’s expansions into television (including Netflix’s animated “Skull Island” series by writer/executive producer Brian Duffield) can coexist without making the movies less of an event. The how and why of these relative concurrent successes show that Godzilla is a malleable character who can exist in various forms in various genres — a contrast to the constant rebooting of singular characters like Superman or Spider-Man.

And Godzilla hasn’t been afraid to save the day for the movie industry. Even with “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” underperforming two years prior, 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong” helped salvage sinking movie theaters after the first year of the pandemic. It was the first major tentpole that earned global grosses — $468 million, including $100 million domestic and $188 million in China — on par (if not better) with what might have been expected in pre-COVID times.

Toho, a Toyko-based entertainment company formed in 1932 that is also known for anime and films by Akira Kurosawa, has owned the rights to the Godzilla and Godzilla-related properties and characters since the 1954 “Godzilla” original. Legendary acquired the English-language rights in March of 2010 to make English-language productions, with Warner Bros. serving as co-producers and distributors (in most territories) for the Hollywood feature films. Legendary has what are colloquially called “rolling rights,” meaning they keep them as long as new Godzilla media gets made every so often.

Toho remains involved in Legendary’s projects as a producer and can still make kaiju films mostly aimed at the Japanese marketplace. Thus far, as evidenced by the relatively concurrent critical and commercial successes of Legendary and WB’s “Godzilla” in 2014 and Toho’s “Shin Godzilla” in 2016, it has been a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“Godzilla’ has deftly tapped into our nuclear anxiety and love of watching big monsters smash things for 70 years,” one high-ranking exhibition insider noted. “It’s great seeing a legacy franchise execute at such a high level in so many different ways because it offers the industry some important, timely lessons in creative reinvention and longevity.”

“Gojira” as a horror movie, not a monster mash

The first “Godzilla,” titled “Gojira” in its native Japan, was a stone-cold horror movie where the giant lizard beast was a metaphor for the unthinkable carnage wrought by America’s use of nuclear weapons upon civilian Japanese populaces during World War II.

That the franchise eventually became associated with hyper-colorful and unapologetically campy monster mashes and kaiju team-ups does little to demystify Ishirō Honda’s original melodrama. But it does qualify as ironic, considering its origins, the extent to which Godzilla has morphed into a national mascot for Japan.

It is one of many franchises — ranging from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series to Blue Sky’s blockbuster “Ice Age” films — to begin with a far more dramatic and emotionally compelling entry than the comparatively more cartoonish follow-ups that came to define the franchise.

As Neuwirth explained to TheWrap: “Sympathetic movie monsters weren’t a new concept for the time.” However, he stated, “Honda’s influential classic managed to wrap a compelling new creation with a distinct look, iconic sound, and innovative method of filmmaking all for the sake of a dark metaphor for the experiences an entire country was still in mourning of, let alone the new fears that have emerged with the arrival of the atomic age.”

Hollywood gets into the monster game

Legendary’s so-called “Monsterverse,” which launched in 2014 with Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla,” has been chugging along with big-budget, globally targeted blockbusters featuring Godzilla and King Kong. It was followed by “Kong: Skull Island,” a Vietnam War-era period piece that earned solid reviews and grossed $568 million globally in early 2017. That remains the biggest-earning “giant monster movie” in unadjusted global box office outside of the “Jurassic Park” features.

However, 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” was a critical and commercial disappointment. Michael Dougherty’s ambitious, sprawling “Godzilla” sequel earned just $390 million, partially because “Avengers: Endgame” and “Aladdin” became such all-consuming early summer smashes and partially because the marketplace had been flooded with other monster movies like “Rampage” and “The Meg” in the time since “Godzilla” and “Kong” had been released.

Legendary’s next Monsterverse film “Godzilla vs. Kong” was already in production when “King of the Monsters” stumbled, so it moved forward (albeit delayed from 2020 to 2021 due to the pandemic). There were reports that Legendary was attempting to sell the film to Netflix for $200 million. Distributor Warner Bros. stepped in and bought Legendary’s 75% share of the film’s $165 million with intent to distribute theatrically, and the movie opened in late March of 2021 with a simultaneous debut in theaters and on HBO Max.

With the success of “Godzilla vs. Kong” the Monsterverse lived on, as Legendary put into development the prequel series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” at Apple TV+ — which has dual timelines set after “Godzilla” and in the 1950s — and another Monsterverse movie, which became “Godzilla X Kong” from “Godzilla vs. Kong” director Adam Wingard.

Toho stands tall

Takashi Yamazaki’s “Godzilla Minus Zero” is the 30th Toho-produced live-action Godzilla film. It has no connection to the Monsterverse movies or shows — and yet was wildly anticipated anyway.

“Shin Godzilla,” a mix of Godzilla horror show and bureaucratic black comedy, was Toho’s first live-action offering since “Godzilla: Final Wars,” which closed out the 1999-2004 “Millenium era” on the 50th anniversary of the original “Godzilla.” Like almost every Japanese-focused entry since “Godzilla 2000” in 1999, it is a straight-up reboot, although a few of the “Millenium Era” titles acknowledge the first film.

In between “Shin Godzilla” (which won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture) and the post-WWII-set “Godzilla Minus Zero,” (currently sitting with a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) Toho also produced three anime-influenced “Godzilla” animated films, which Netflix has distributed throughout much of the world. None of these films are overshadowing the Legendary films, nor are the Legendary films and shows minimizing the Toho-produced films among the fanbase. Fans are eating it all up.

And “delivering on that enjoyment is fairly simple, as the bar for success doesn’t require much for a Godzilla fan,” Neuwirth continued. “Deliver a good enough-looking Godzilla destroying cities or getting into fights with other kaiju, and the battle for approval has been won.”

Judging by the box office success of “Godzilla Minus One” already — $34 million globally on a reported $15 million budget — the audience that craves Godzilla is being offered all they could want, minus the toxic element found within other notable fandoms.

In recent years, Toho has leaned into its Godzilla IP to expand internationally. In 2019, the company told Variety it had injected $140 million into its Toho International subsidiary in Los Angeles with an eye to working more with Hollywood. And in a “Toho Vision 2021” white paper released in 2018, Toho said a company priority was to develop a “character business centered on ‘Godzilla.’”

Everywhere all at once

Evidence that one “Godzilla” title isn’t impeding the success of another can be seen in the performance of “Monarch” on Apple TV+ and the growing anticipation for “Godzilla Minus One.”

While raw streaming data is hard to come by, the premiere episodes of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” made the Top 10 at Samba TV for the week of Nov. 20. It over-indexed with Gen Z households by 12% and over-indexed with Black households by 18% while pulling in 292,000 U.S. households (live+ two days) during the period, according to Samba TV. The expansion into streaming-era television — the show takes place after “Godzilla” and before “King of the Monsters” — seems to complement rather than undercut the Monsterverse’s theatrical ambitions.

The move is reminiscent of decades of episodic shows based on DreamWorks Animation movies that thrived on their own demographic (kid-friendly) terms without making films like “Kung Fu Panda 3,” “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” or “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” any less of a theatrical smash. It helps that, unlike the Disney+ MCU shows, there isn’t a publicity campaign telling folks that they must watch certain Monsterverse movies to understand the show.

Godzilla will live on in the monster’s various and diverse distribution channels. As one studio insider said, so long as filmmakers “remember to put the ‘god’ in “Godzilla,” the character can play in whatever sandbox is required.

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