Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 Has A New Name, Release Date
The movie will be titled Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and in theaters on March 15, 2024.
When Godzilla vs. Kong came out, it managed to appeal to both those who love creature features and those who wanted the kind of cinematic showdown we last saw between Batman and Superman. Given the success of this Warner Bros. film, a sequel was inevitable. Now, The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the sequel will be titled Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and will be released on March 15, 2024.
Before this announcement, many fans were simply calling the sequel “Godzilla vs. Kong 2,” especially because another showdown between these killer kaiju would fit the Hollywood formula for sequels. However, there is a reason that the new film has dropped “vs” from the title. Simply put, the two terrifying titans must “team up to face a world-ending threat so terrifying that neither could survive alone.”
We don’t yet know what threat is so menacing that it is going to require Godzilla and Kong to team up, but this isn’t their first rodeo working together. While the previous movie mostly focused on different clashes between its leading monsters, the inevitable third-act twist pitted them against a mutual foe: Mechagodzilla.
As with Superman stories, it can be difficult to come up with a threat powerful enough to menace both of these powerful monsters, and we don’t yet know which new monster is going to step into Mechagodzilla’s shiny boots to threaten the world.
What we do know, though, is that Godzilla x Kong is in good hands. It will be directed by Adam Wingard, the veteran genre director who also brought us the 2016 Blair Witch and the live-action adaptation of the beloved anime Death Note. And he’s bringing some of the Godzilla vs. Kong cast with him, including Brian Tyree Henry, Rebecca Hall, and Kaylee Hottle.
There will be some newcomers in Godzilla x Kong, though, including Fala Chen, Dan Stevens, and Rachel House. We don’t yet know what roles they will be playing, but these new characters will hopefully be as entertaining as the ones that came before. In the previous movie, Wingard did a great job of making us care about both the supporting cast and the titular monsters, which is a balance other franchises such as Transformers never seemed to achieve.
Still, the sequel would likely never have gotten a green light if Godzilla vs. Kong hadn’t been such an unexpected smash hit. On Rotten Tomatoes, that film has 75 percent with critics and a whopping 91 percent with audiences. And those audiences certainly turned out to theaters to see it: amid concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic was going to end cinema as we know it, this film brought in a cool $470 million global box office.
While fans are mostly focusing on this as an ambitious sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong, it’s worth remembering that this is a “Monsterverse” comprised of four films so far, with Gozilla x Kong expanding the narrative with a fifth movie. At a time when other studios were trying to copy the MCU formula by creating cinematic universes of their own and failing (looking at you, Dark Universe), the Monsterverse has unexpectedly and inexplicably become a thriving success. The only thing that could make this better would be the return of Gamera, complete with the cheeky tribute song created by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
