Godzilla Minus Zero opened to 31.6 million dollars at North American theatres over the weekend, the biggest opening ever for a live action foreign language film in the United States and Canada. The Takashi Yamazaki directed film topped the weekend chart easily, according to estimates released on Sunday, and it did so in Japanese with English subtitles, a result that would have been unthinkable for a subtitled film a decade ago.
Why it matters
The scale of the opening is what makes it a record. The film played in 3,254 locations across North America, and its 31.6 million dollar debut nearly tripled the opening weekend of its predecessor, 2023 Godzilla Minus One, which earned just over 11 million dollars on its way to a 57.1 million dollar domestic haul and 114 million dollars globally. Minus Zero earned more than half of that global total in its first three days alone, with about 63 million dollars worldwide.
The film is the 39th in a franchise stretching back to 1954, and it is set in Japan in 1949, two years after the creature lay dead at the bottom of the ocean. Godzilla resurfaces to face a new threat, a dragon like beast called Ghidorah, and the story is as much about a country rebuilding after the war as it is about a monster. That combination, spectacle with a serious story underneath, is what made Minus One an Oscar winner for visual effects in 2024.
What happens next
The result also says something about the audience. A Japanese language film, distributed in the United States by GKIDS, a subsidiary of Toho, has just beaten every English language release in the country. The previous record for a live action foreign language opening had stood since Hero in 2004, and the only foreign language film to open bigger in North America is the animated Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, at 70.6 million dollars.
What happens next will be decided by the second weekend, when the film has to hold its audience without the novelty of opening day. The first weekend says the demand is real, and the global total of about 63 million dollars says it is not just an American story. For Toho, the record is a triumph. For Hollywood, it is a warning: the biggest film in America this weekend was not made in America, and it was not in English.
