GODZILLA VS KONG Catapults to $9.6 Mil Opening Day

[Monterey Jack]

$122 million bow in China.

https://deadline.com/2021/03/godzilla-v ... 234722557/

This is a VERY encouraging sign that, with the right movie (i.e. not a dour, impenetrable slog like Tenet or an overstuffed franchise piñata like WW84), audiences ARE willing to come out for a blockbuster that delivers. I doubt it'll come close to that in its U.S. bow, but still, nice to see a movie making more than a buck twenty-five these days.

[AndyDursin]

That's the worldwide number but it's still real good. Also shows how poorly KING OF THE MONSTERS did in that this outgrossed it in several countries already, even under the current circumstances.

SUNDAY UPDATE, writethru: Warner Bros/Legendary’s Godzilla Vs Kong has set a new benchmark for the biggest international box office debut by a Hollywood film during the pandemic era with an estimated $121.8M from 38 overseas markets. Those were led by China’s $70.34M (RMB 457M). Legendary markets and distributes its modern monster series in the Middle Kingdom where GVK topped the $66M (unadjusted) start of 2019’s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters. In like-for-like markets, and at today’s exchange rates, GVK is tracking ahead of KOTM by 11% and roughly on par with the opening weekend of Kong: Skull Island.

The Adam Wingard-directed clash of the titans ranked No. 1 in all markets where it released. In China, it maintained a strong 9 audience score from Maoyan throughout the weekend and landed at the high end of our pre-release projected range. Maoyan is seeing a finish at RMB 924.1M ($141M). GVK currently leads pre-sales through Thursday before anticipated new local title My Sister debuts. Mexico and Australia both did smashing business, each coming in at $6.3M. In the former, this is by far the strongest launch since cinemas reopened and lands 17% ahead of 2014’s Godzilla, 18% above Skull Island and 45% over KOTM. Australia’s opening surpassed all comps and has already outgrossed the lifetime cume of KOTM.

https://deadline.com/2021/03/godzilla-v ... 234722557/

[AndyDursin]

Reviews are good -- hopefully, it sounds like they learned their lesson after the KING OF THE MONSTERS misfire (and even the depressing characters of the Edwards film) and just concentrated on delivering a fun, upbeat monster romp.

Happy it sounds self-contained and also hopeful it can be shown to a 1st grader...will have to watch it first to be sure.

[Monterey Jack]

This is the kind of movie meant to be seen on an IMAX screen, not one with Frances McDormand pooping in a bucket.

[Monterey Jack]

7/10

At times thrilling, at times obnoxious, the final film in the Legendary "Monsterverse" definitely delivers on the bottom line whenever the titular Titans lay the smackdown on each other (especially a brilliantly-staged fight on and around a fleet of battleships at sea, with a sly homage to Jaws tossed in), but the human stuff is -- as to be expected at this point -- tolerable at best, and wildly irritating at worst (Bryan Tyree Henry, as a conspiracy-crazed monster podcaster, pitches his obnoxious performance at the level you rarely see outside of Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich or Stephen Sommers movies, and is unendurable every second he's on-screen). Plus, a lot of the creative choices are just weird, especially when we get into the very odd delving into Kong's origins. Still, I liked more than I didn't, at least it isn't as visually fugly as King Of The Monsters, and the final Hong Kong-set fight offers up a lot of brutal fun (including a reference to, of all things, Lethal Weapon 2 ).

Plus, it was heartening to see a fairly large turn-out for my 1:00 PM matinee...over twenty people besides me, all seeming to enjoy the mayhem (some 12-year-old in the row in front of me was literally spinning around in circles while Junkie XL's junky score blared forth during the end credits), which is the largest amount of people I have seen at any movie since theaters came back in August. Additionally, more of the concession vendors have finally opened up, which is an encouraging sign (helped myself to a post-movie pretzel ). I think this is going to do gangbusters business as far as Covid-era restrictions allow.

[AndyDursin]

I had the exact same reaction -- though I was watching this on HBO Max and was absolutely stunned by the Dolby Vision HDR grade. The colors literally fly off the screen -- very clearly director Adam Wingard was trying to do some kind of TRON homage with the neon-infused color scheme of this movie, and it was, if nothing else, mesmerizingly pretty to look at. The movie is impressively bathed in primaries from start to end, and the Tom "Don't Call Me Junkie XL" Holkenberg score apes (no pun intended) the Vangelis/Wendy Carlos '80s vibe, though make no mistake, it has no melodic/thematic invention whatsoever. It's purely the vintage electronic tone he evokes.

The battles are great, the Kong animation is impressive, and the climactic battle between the two titans and the new Mechagodzilla is really well staged. Wingard fares much better than Michael Dougherty did in his gloomy, miserable predecessor "Godzilla: King Of The Monsters," making both the visual effects animation and the overall editing of the assorted battles much easier to comprehend from an audience perspective.

Story wise, though, the movie has clearly been pared down from a much longer narrative, as it follows two groups of characters around -- one anchored by Alexander Sarsgard (whose original function to the story must've been left on the cutting room floor) and Rebecca Hall, the other the "Godzilla Team" with a returning Millie Bobby Brown -- to negligible effect. It's a welcome shift that the overall "feel" is looser and lighter than the previous Godzilla movies, but there are still clear and obvious gaps in how the screenplay was assembled, as character relationships are abrupt and the ending is so perfunctory all it generates is a shrug of the shoulders. I also agree the "upside down" world building for Kong is just ludicrous and didn't really work for me (it would've made more sense if they just found another location that looked like Skull Island in the middle of the Earth -- and what was so wrong with Skull Island in the first place?).

Overall, it's still fun -- the colors alone are a dynamic demo reel for HDR and Dolby Vision -- but like a lot of modern films that rank high on the "Tomato Meter," it's nothing that resembles a great movie, even of the popcorn variety. I also think Gareth Edwards' 2014 "Godzilla" was the best film of this cycle, warts and all, as this movie needed more work in the story department to really put it over the top.

[Monterey Jack]

Story wise, though, the movie has clearly been pared down from a much longer narrative, as it follows two groups of characters around -- one anchored by Alexander Sarsgard (whose original function to the story must've been left on the cutting room floor) and Rebecca Hall, the other the "Godzilla Team" with a returning Millie Bobby Brown -- to negligible effect.

I've heard Ziyi Zhang shot scenes as her character(s) from King Of The Monsters, but got left on the cutting room floor...yet they had ample screentime to give over to Brian Tyree Henry's phenomenally obnoxious performance. Also pity that poor Milly Bobby Brown had 90% of her role yoked to this idiot and the fat kid from Deadpool 2. Just like Bradley Whitford in KOTM, every single time Henry appeared on screen, I was like...

[AndyDursin]

The thing that's so frustrating -- why, over the course of these 4 movies, did the producers not understand that nobody cares about the human characters. They've attempted to "world build" with this Monarch company, only to basically cut it entirely out of the movie here, yet the story is still hung up with a whole group of undeveloped people we never care about. On the "Kong Team," the elements are in place like Rebecca Hall and the Skarsgard character, but there's not enough time so that they register, while all kinds of very basic plot elements are left unaddressed.

For example, isn't Kong running around at the end the first time anyone has ever seen him in public outside Skull Island? Wouldn't you think someone would say something about it? Or when the little deaf girl tells Kong that Godzilla isn't the bad guy. Where's the scene that even sets that up? Very, very basic (but important) moments like those are just absent in the movie.

Obviously a lot of things were cut or just not addressed. I mean, why would you write a movie that's 105 minutes and has a half-dozen lead characters? It just makes no sense. The project feels like it was "assembled" (which it was, in a writer's room with a dozen people yelling at one another) and didn't evolve organically, which is too bad. Wingard had a much better visual handle on the material than Michael Dougherty, so this movie could have clicked had the source elements been there. I also agree with you, Brown was capable enough of handling this project on her own -- and making it more of a youth-based effort would've made more sense. Unfortunately she has to share her scenes with Henry and the obnoxious brat from the Deadpool movie, whose appeal completely escapes me.

The real lesson they did not learn, either from this movie's predecessors, or even the old Toho Godzilla movies -- it's OK to have fun. The audience doesn't want Brian Tyree Henry, much like they didn't want Vera Farmiga or Aaron Taylor Johnson or whoever (even the KONG SKULL ISLAND characters were stock, bland and uninvolving types, as capable as that cast was). They're there to watch the monsters -- not a group of brooding, humorless characters mumbling around.

The better way forward would've been to put an unorthodox casting choice up front -- make it a caper film, possibly even a light comedy -- because so long as you deliver the goods with the monsters, people aren't going to care what's running whenever they're not on-screen. They just didn't "get it", and seemed hellbent on "mythology world building" and making a formulaic product for the foreign box-office.

Still I think this movie will do well because the core elements do work. It's just everything surrounding them that's needlessly unappealing and often confounding. And even on the terms of the previous films, things like the backstory for the monsters makes no sense at all. Kong wants to sit in an empty throne in an upside-down Middle Earth that looks like Gandalf and company are about to poke out from one corner? Okay.....

[Monterey Jack]

The old Toho movies were certainly filled with uninteresting stock characters (the Grim-Faced Military Man, the Young Scientist, the Reporter, the Love Interest), yet those movies ran, on average, around 95 minutes, so the blandness of the human interplay didn't have time to really rankle the viewer. Plus, the increasingly goofy humor in those films was actually funny a lot of the time, whether intentionally or not, whereas all of the "comic relief" provided by generally capable actors like Brian Tyree Henry and Bradley Whitford in these "Monsterverse" movies just comes across as cloddish at best, icepick-in-the-ear obnoxious at worst. This is why Kong: Skull Island was my favorite of the four...the human characters were dull and thinly-sketched, but at least none of the performances ANNOYED me to the degree that some did in the other three (hilarious to me how so many people think the 2014 Godzilla was "marred" somehow when Bryan Cranston was killed off a half-hour in, when his performance in the film is laughably terrible ). Plus, seeing a pre-anorexia Brie Larson filling out that sweaty tank top was a pleasing visual distraction from her wooden performance.

[AndyDursin]

Yes, that was "the old Brie" indeed there. Though Tom Hiddleston was the most worthless leading man this side of Alexander Skarsgard lol, and all the "evil military" crap bored me to tears.

It's funny -- the rapturous reviews for GODZILLA VS. KONG are so over the top positive, you wonder if this is some conspiracy to get people back to theaters. Every person I know who watched it hated it. I mean, I still liked it generally, far more than KING OF THE MONSTERS but not as much as the 2014 film (or SKULL ISLAND for that matter). Yet the "82% fresh!" designation is hard to figure. Some of the positive reviews are like the ones that typically accompany Marvel films.

Great opening though -- not surprised. It's time to get things rolling, and this will help lead the way for other studios too.

https://deadline.com/2021/04/godzilla-v ... 234726022/

[Monterey Jack]

Also, I remember being happy to see Lance Reddick's name in the opening credits (he's a cool, underrated actor)...and he had, what, one line?

[Monterey Jack]

It's funny -- the rapturous reviews for GODZILLA VS. KONG are so over the top positive, you wonder if this is some conspiracy to get people back to theaters.

Shades of WW84, which frontloaded the few positive reviews it received before the film's release, but by the time all the reviews were tabulated, it went down from the 80s to somewhere around, what, 60%?

Great opening though -- not surprised. It's time to get things rolling, and this will help lead the way for other studios too.

Indeed. I heard a woman ahead of me as I entered the theater say to the man she was with how excited she was to be "back at the movies", and that communal buzz -- even with social distancing and limited seating -- surrounded me throughout the film.

This is LONG past due, and I could see the studios scrambling to adjust release dates and push delayed movies forward, rather than back, especially with what should have been a traditional "summer movie season" looming in just a month. Disney was incredibly stupid to push back Black Widow yet again, when they could have had their traditional first-weekend-of-May slot, which would have killed as GvK would be winding down by that point. Also aggravating that they're doing the dual theatrical/Disney+ thing for their own product like BW and Cruella (as they did for Raya & The Last Dragon), yet they're throwing Pixar under the bus by releasing their second movie in a row on D+ only (Luca). Yeah, you won't have to pay extra to watch it, but that's not the point.

[AndyDursin]

There's a caveat though with this performance, as good as it is (they're now estimating $40 million opening).

It's opening by itself, with no competition, occupying virtually every screen in theaters that are open.

I don't think it shows that there won't be a major commercial box-office drop-off post-pandemic, or a marketplace that isn't going to be very limited in what it can accommodate.

What it DOES show, and which I've long predicted, is there will be a marketplace for big event, blockbuster, tentpole franchises. Especially when they face no competition and have things free and clear to themselves.

This is a movie with a huge built-in audience appeal...not every movie has that. So yay for Marvel and "name brands" anyway -- but beyond that...

We see this doing well, then something like Disney's (really good) RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON totally struggle...all it means is there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the marketplace for commercial theatrical exhibition going forward.

[Monterey Jack]

There's a caveat though with this performance, as good as it is (they're now estimating $40 million opening).

We see this doing well, then something like Disney's (really good) RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON totally struggle...all it means is there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the marketplace for commercial theatrical exhibition going forward.

Raya's poor performance (it was outgrossed by Tom & Jerry! ) is due, in large part, to the Regal theater chain refusing to show it due to Disney's greedy demands about the box office take. I'm sure this will be ironed out by the time Black Widow is finally released, as the MCU movies in particular need to be shown on ALL available screens to make a profit.

[AndyDursin]

I still doubt it would've raked in a lot of money even if Regal was showing it. Mainly because there's not one movie before this one to gross anywhere near this amount of money, even the ones playing in every chain. There hasn't been anything to even come close to a $20 million in an opening weekend before this, much less $40 million.

Also shows GVK would've done a $100 mil opening weekend in a pre-COVID marketplace, which would've absolutely smoked the poor performance of GODZILLA - KING OF THE MONSTERS.

'm sure this will be ironed out by the time Black Widow is finally released, as the MCU movies in particular need to be shown on ALL available screens to make a profit.

I don't know -- they're still running it on the premium $29 viewing option of Disney+, perhaps as a reaction to that.

It'll be interesting to see how much that one takes in. It doesn't have the hype of ENDGAME and looks utterly generic -- like the Marvel "episodes" that fill in between the really big franchise names -- but the fans will show up for it no matter what it is, as CAPTAIN MARVEL attests.