'Godzilla x Kong' Projected To Rule Easter Weekend With $50 ...

With an Oscar in his back pocket courtesy of Toho’s Godzilla Minus One, the King of the Monsters roars back to theaters this Easter holiday in Legendary-Warner’s latest sequel in the MonsterVerse series. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is expected rule the weekend with $50 million stateside and a global weekend bow north of $125 million.

Monsters unite in "Godzilla x Kong"

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, writer-director-VFX supervisor Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One energized audiences and media with its record-setting box office run and widely praised character-driven narrative alongside mind-blowing, realistic CGI and kaiju imagery. The film’s theatrical release was extended, and then the movie was rereleased into theaters via a /Minus Color black and white edition.

With Godzilla Minus One hitting home entertainment soon and the lingering glow from its awards victory last month, the cinema environment is primed for the arrival of Godzilla x Kong.

Godzilla x Kong’s marketing has unleashed dazzling trailers full of monster-versus-monster battle royale and sci-fi spectacle, reflecting the Godzilla franchise’s popular history of mixing sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, and plenty of disastrous imagery of cities and volcanoes and other locales laid to waste as kaiju do battle.

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It’s a markedly different tone and style compared to Godzilla Minus One’s restrained, somber, hyper-realistic narrative. But Godzilla has always been comfortable being many different things to different people, and can exist in all manner of storytelling approaches, and audiences have demonstrated much love for the MonsterVerse.

Gareth Edwards' Godzilla earned $525 million in 2015, and then Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island took $568 million a few years later in 2017. Godzilla returned in 2019 with Godzilla: King of the Monsters for $387 million just before the pandemic upended cinema.

Yet despite Covid-19, Godzilla vs. Kong still managed $470 million million in 2021, proving the combo of the two beasts is popular enough to overcome the myriad struggles facing theatrical — notice, too, this blockbuster performance came despite the film also releasing day-and-date on HBO Max. If your franchise can gross $470 million in a global disease crisis and while it’s playing on TV, that’s a good sign.

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All of the films except for King of the Monsters were acclaimed, and that film was close to 50-50 split among critics. Audiences likewise generally like or love the films. That extends to the fabulous AppleTV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, an action-packed thrill ride with an exceptional cast and amazing visual effects.

Godzilla x Kong has a big opening internationally, and should be able to gross at least $75 million. On the higher end, it could reach $90 million depending on its play in certain major markets, including China.

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And domestically, Godzilla x Kong could overperform toward $55 million if word of mouth is positive enough and audiences quickly move on from Ghostbusters: The Frozen Empire as I expect. So while I doubt $150 million is in play, Godzilla x Kong definitely has a shot at $140-145 million territory.

Meanwhile, Dune: Part Two will top $600 million this weekend, officially putting the two-film series north of $1 billion in combined revenue. Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi sequel looks to reach about $610 million, potentially as much as $615 million depending on how the weekday goes and whether it holds stronger against Godzilla x Kong.

In fact, $620 million is even in the cards at this point, if things go better than expected for the Dune sequel and if Godzilla x Kong perhaps underperforms slightly.

Elsewhere this weekend, Dreamworks Animation’s Mike Mitchell-helmed Kung Fu Panda 4 draws closer to $300 million as it continues its foreign rollout in markets such as the UK, France, Canada, and Hong Kong. Next month, the movie will be released in additional key territories, including South Korea and Vietnam.

Already, the animated series has a total cumulative box office of more than $2 billion and counting.

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Kung Fu Panda 4’s popularity is a nice feather in Dreamworks’ cap to kick off the year. With good holds so far and several markets ahead on its release schedule, this modestly-budgeted sequel ($85 million, compared to $145 million for Kung Fu Panda 4) is well into profit territory and guarantees a sequel. It shouldn’t have trouble topping $400 million, but we’ll have to wait to see how much higher it can go, depending in part on how soon it reaches that threshold.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire will enjoy a bit of a boost from Easter weekend, but with an opening on par with its predecessor Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s disappointing Covid-suppressed performance, this is another legacy sequel a studio was determined to make despite a pretty clear message that audiences aren’t interested in it, or at least not the way it’s being done.

Sony’s Ghostbusters revival movies plus the two most recent Sony Spider-Man Universe films Morbius and Madame Web cost a combined $335 million to shoot, plus marketing, but generated only about $600 million (this assumes Frozen Empire brings home about $200 million) in total worldwide box office.

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Only the two SSU Venom films were a success — $1.3 billion gross, against $220 million budgets plus marketing. But that’s after a second film that fell substantially from the first film’s $856 million gross. And without the crossover with Spider-Man himself, Venom will quickly lose appeal as a standalone character and can’t be counted on to deliver enough box office success to carry the other films.

This year’s Kraven The Hunter arrives August 30th to keep the SSU alive, but I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t suffer the same failed fate as Morbius and Madame Web. At some point, studios have to stop pumping money into IP sequels that audiences clearly don’t want.

But that certainly isn’t the case for the MonsterVerse, and this weekend its New Empire will show the Frozen Empire how it’s done with a big global rollout that sees solid holds and big weekly ticket sales as it hits new markets in the coming months.