Godzilla Minus Zero opened over the weekend to an estimated $31.6 million in North America, nearly triple the debut of Godzilla Minus One, and took in about $63 million worldwide.
Takashi Yamazaki’s film is the sequel to Toho’s Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, distributed in North America by GKIDS. It played in 3,254 theaters and finished first, ahead of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s The Cat in the Hat, which opened second with $20.5 million from 4,003 theaters. Audiences gave Minus Zero an A from CinemaScore. It holds 90% from critics and 96% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. The opening is 2.8 times what Minus One earned and the largest in GKIDS history, passing the $13 million set by The Boy and the Heron in 2023.
The film now holds the record for the biggest North American opening by a live-action foreign-language film made outside the United States. The previous mark was Jet Li’s Hero at about $17.9 million in 2002. Only The Passion of the Christ, an American production shot in Aramaic, opened bigger at $83.8 million in 2004. Minus Zero is the fourth non-English film to reach No. 1 on the US weekend chart, after The Passion of the Christ, Hero and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, which still holds the overall foreign-language opening record.
Overseas the film earned about $31 million, including about $17 million in Japan, where it opened November 3. Toho reported 910 million yen and about 590,000 tickets on opening day, the highest opening-day take for a live-action film in Japan. IMAX accounted for $21.3 million globally, or 34% of the film’s gross. “This historic opening shows how deeply audiences around the world connect with Godzilla and with Takashi Yamazaki’s vision,” said Koji Ueda, president of Toho Global. “Our first near-simultaneous global release was built on that belief.”
The first film set a high bar. Godzilla Minus One cost about $10 million and opened in December 2023 at No. 3 with $11.4 million. It finished with $57.1 million in the US and Canada, the highest total for a Japanese-language film there, and about $116 million worldwide. It won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, the first non-English-language film to take that category, and holds 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. Minus Zero is on pace to pass its US total. JustWatch listed Minus One as the most-watched film across streaming platforms in the week before the sequel opened.
Critics have measured the sequel against its predecessor. Roger Ebert’s site wrote that it “doesn’t quite reach the miraculous highs of its predecessor, but the old boy still has plenty of bite.” The Wrap called it “a great Godzilla sequel, maybe even one of the best, but it’s not one of the great Godzilla movies.”
The ending leaves Godzilla alive, the family’s safety uncertain and outside forces still interested in what happened. The film’s official description reads, “There is no third time. Everything ends here.” Yamazaki has not closed the door. “Part of me thinks, well, maybe it’ll be the most graceful to end it right here, and the other part of me wants to see what happens next,” he told Inverse. He has put the odds at “fifty-fifty at this point” and added, “I’m quite satisfied and happy with the current ending we have.” He has also said he would love to revisit Godzilla at some point in his career, and that a third film would be Toho’s call.
Toho now has a first weekend that is nearly triple the opening of a Best Visual Effects winner, and a worldwide total that passed $60 million in three days in North America and five in Japan. Whether that moves the odds past fifty-fifty is Yamazaki’s and Toho’s decision.