Godzilla MonsterVerse Is Getting Even Bigger
If you haven’t yet jumped into the new Godzilla MonsterVerse Legendary has created, now is as good a time as any. Apple TV+ just renewed the new television series in the franchise, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, for a second season, and there’s still more news of some additional spinoff series in the works.
The Beginning
The Godzilla MonsterVerse didn’t begin as a franchise but as a reboot film from Legendary and Warner Bros. Pictures when the 2014 movie Godzilla hit theaters. The foundational flick garnered a gross of $529 million worldwide, leading to the creation of four more movies and two series.
The Monsterverse
Altogether, Legendary’s Godzilla MosterVerse consists of the 2014 Godzilla, 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, and most recently Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which topped the box office with $380 million to date. Overall, the Monsterverse has drawn more than $2 billion at the global box office and shows no signs of slowing with the newest second-season renewal of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
Included in the deal Apple TV+ made with Legendary’s Godzilla MonsterVerse for the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was a new multi-series plan for the expansion of the franchise. There’s no word yet on what exactly that deal will entail, but it’s exciting news for Godzilla fans.
Where Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Fits
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters picks up a year after Godzilla’s rediscovery in the 2014 film that started the Godzilla MonsterVerse. In the movie, Godzilla isn’t too much of a predator but more of a hero for humanity when he takes down the “MUTOs” (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). Sure, he kills some people and tears some stuff up along the way, but he takes down some really nasty flying things and goes on his way into the ocean.
Kurt And Wyatt Russell
In Legacy’s Godzilla MonsterVerse show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Godzilla is portrayed more like a predator than a problem. The series takes place in two different times, the 1950s and the more present time of 2015(ish). It dives deeper into the operations and secret doings of Monarch (a covert organization monitoring giant monsters known as Titans) and follows the trails of two siblings looking to find out more about their father’s involvement with the secretive organization.
Kurt Russell joins the Godzilla MonsterVerse alongside his son Wyatt Russell, playing the same character in the show, only several decades apart. Wyatt is the younger version of Lee Shaw, and Kurt plays the older Shaw. Anna Sawai plays one of the inquisitive siblings, Cate Randa. Kiersey Clemons is May, and Ren Watabe plays Kentaro (the other half of the sibling duo).
An Immediate Hit
After one full season of airing, the Godzilla MonsterVerse show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters earned an 89 percent approval rating on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Kurt Russel also won a Critics’ Choice Super Award for Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series just this month.
The full first season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is streaming on Apple TV+ worldwide with a subscription.
