'Godzilla Minus Zero' tops the box office with $31.6 million, nearly tripling its predecessor

Toho's "Godzilla Minus Zero" opened at No. 1 in North America this weekend with $31.6 million. That is nearly three times the first-weekend take of "Godzilla Minus One" and the biggest opening ever for GKids, the Japanese studio's American distribution arm.

Takashi Yamazaki's sequel played in 3,254 locations. It also earned $31 million overseas, $17 million of it in Japan, for a worldwide start of about $63 million. Reports put the budget at $13 million or $15 million. At either figure, the film earned back several times its production cost in a single weekend, a ratio Hollywood tentpoles almost never manage.

The records stack up quickly. "Minus Zero" is only the fourth non-English film to top the U.S. weekend chart. Among live-action films in languages other than English, only "The Passion of the Christ" opened bigger, with $83 million in 2004. That film was performed in Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic but made by Mel Gibson as an American production. GKids' previous best was the $13 million opening of Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" in 2023, and the new film more than doubled it.

Premium screens did the heavy lifting

The most striking number from the weekend is where people watched. Premium large-format screens accounted for 74% of opening-weekend ticket sales, and IMAX alone brought in $12.7 million. "Minus Zero" is the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX, and GKids sold it as an event built for the biggest screens available.

That approach paid off, and it says something about how this audience sees the film. A share that high suggests moviegoers treated "Minus Zero" as an occasion worth a surcharge, not a curiosity to catch at a matinee. Premium tickets cost more, so the gross probably overstates attendance compared with a film that played mostly on standard screens. Even so, the dollars are real, and theater chains will notice that a Japanese monster movie filled their most profitable auditoriums.

The heavy premium share also carries a risk. IMAX screens rotate quickly to the next big release, and a film this dependent on them can lose a large slice of its revenue when it loses those auditoriums. How long "Minus Zero" keeps them will shape its total more than almost anything else in the next few weeks.

The momentum comes straight from the first film. "Godzilla Minus One" reached U.S. theaters in December 2023, opened to about $11 million and went on to gross more than $55 million in North America, setting box office records for an international release here. Worldwide it earned more than $110 million against a $10 million budget, and it beat far more expensive competition to win the Oscar for best visual effects. It holds a 99% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The new film stays in the same period. It is set in 1949 and follows a Japan still rebuilding after World War II as monsters return. Critics have responded well, with a Certified Fresh 90% critics score and a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus calls Yamazaki's version of the creature "one of the mightiest yet."

That kind of praise is unusual for a franchise this old. Toho introduced Godzilla in 1954, and Hollywood has tried its own versions several times, from Roland Emmerich's 1998 film to Gareth Edwards' 2014 reboot and the Legendary films that followed. The American films have generally sold scale. Yamazaki's films sell scale too, but they anchor it in grief, guilt and ordinary people trying to rebuild. The box office suggests audiences see the difference and will pay more for it.

There is also a lesson here about budgets. Yamazaki has now made two films that look expensive for a fraction of what a studio monster movie costs, and the second one opened to numbers many $100 million films would accept. It is hard to see how Hollywood ignores that math, though copying Toho's efficiency would be harder than copying its monster.

A softer start for 'The Cat in the Hat'

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation's "The Cat in the Hat" finished second with $20.5 million domestically and $30.5 million worldwide. That matched studio projections but falls well short of the $67.5 million that Universal and Illumination's "The Grinch" opened to in the same early November slot in 2018. With a $92 million budget, the Dr. Seuss adaptation needs a long run to turn a theatrical profit.

It has some reasons for hope. Audiences gave it an A on CinemaScore, with the strongest grades coming from children and from moviegoers over 50, the group most likely to know the books. Families get more free time as the holidays approach, but the film will also face Disney's "Hexed" over Thanksgiving. A solid grade with a modest opening often points to a long run rather than a big one, and "Cat" will need exactly that.

The rest of the top five mixed new releases with one holdover. The period musical "Drummer Boy" opened in the top five, and the documentary "You Can See Everything" added $8.8 million in its fourth weekend. That brings its total to just under $80 million, and it is now chasing $100 million, a mark usually reached only by music or nature documentaries such as "March of the Penguins." Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the only documentary outside those categories to get there domestically.

Rounding out the top five was "Ramayana: Rise of a Legend," which, with a reported production budget of about $200 million, is the most expensive Indian film ever made. Its start was lukewarm, about $55 million worldwide. The film is the first of two parts, and the second is slated for 2028. Next to "Minus Zero," the contrast is stark: two international epics shared the top five this weekend, and the one that cost a fraction as much was the clear winner.

Further down the chart, Laika's "Wildwood" took sixth with $7 million in its third weekend, bringing it to $40 million domestically. Warner Bros. and DC Studios' "Clayface" placed seventh with $6.7 million, for totals of $56.6 million domestic and $109 million worldwide against a $40 million budget, a modest success that is already losing momentum.

The next test for "Minus Zero" is awards season. Its predecessor's visual effects Oscar turned a surprise hit into a cultural event. With stronger reviews than most blockbusters and a far bigger opening than "Minus One," the sequel looks like a credible contender to repeat that run, though a second win in the same category would be harder to earn than the first.