Crossover movies can be a mixed bag. Sometimes they can be surprise hits, like the Alien vs Predator films. In other cases, like Batman vs Superman or Freddy vs Jason, they can be awful. The first Godzilla vs Kong film, released in 2024, sits somewhere between the two. It entertained more people than it didn’t, and more importantly than that, it attracted more than £400m at the box office despite being released during a time when a lot of movie theatres were still closed because of the pandemic. The financial factor alone meant that we were always likely to get a sequel to the film, and we can now confirm that one is officially in development. Godzilla vs Kong II is scheduled to start shooting later this year.
We first heard whispers that something was happening with the franchise back in January this year when Apple TV approved a new spin-off series set in the “MonsterVerse” called Monarch, which will fill in some of the backstories behind the titanic battle between the two famous movie behemoths and take place directly after the events of the first film. The fact that a TV show was going to pick up from where the first movie left off briefly left fans wondering whether the chances of a second film were off the table, but that’s proved not to be the case. Legendary has decided that audiences can’t have too much of a good thing, and so we’re getting a second cinematic dose of the feud between the king of the apes and the world’s most famous Kaiju.
Source: theverge.com
We might have missed an opportunity to predict that the sequel was on the way when it was announced last month that a brand new official Godzilla online casino game was in the world. Entitled Godzilla: The Slot, the game is being handled by the casino development company Sakuragate and is currently scheduled for release in June 2024. It won’t be the first casino game to feature Godzilla (or King Kong, for that matter), but given the announcement’s timing, it’s likely that the film and the casino game are connected. As has been noted many times on the casino review website sistersites.co.uk, slots and casino games based on movies tend to be popular with players and perform well for the companies that make them. It’s another way for copyright holders to make money from their intellectual properties. Given the anticipated cost of making a blockbuster like Godzilla vs Kong II, that extra income is likely to come in handy.
Quite how scriptwriters will go about bringing Kong and Godzilla back together again for a second fight is unknown. We don’t want to spoil anything about the first movie, but there isn’t an ongoing situation that calls for a sequel by the time the credits roll, and there’s no post-credits sequence to set one up either. Kong and Godzilla end up in very different places after their strangely inconclusive final battle, and there’s no obvious reason for them to meet again. That tends not to be a problem when there’s money to be made, though, and movies like this aren’t designed to be taken seriously. We’re sure that whatever the writers come up with will be good enough, and audiences are far more likely to care about the battle scenes than they are about how the combatants made it to the battlefield.
Source: prolog.rs
Godzilla vs Kong I was directed by Adam Wingard, who’s indicated in the past that he enjoyed working within the “MonsterVerse” and would be open to coming back to make a second film, but it’s far from clear that he’ll be available to do so. At the moment, he’s hard at work on the long-awaited sequel to Face-Off, and his responsibilities there will have him tied up for much of the next few months. That being said, we don’t have clarity on when shooting on the new Godzilla vs Kong film will begin. The only thing that Legendary has committed to is that shooting will begin before 2024 ends, but that could mean anything as late as the second half of December. Production on a film like this is unlikely to move quickly – especially with all the CGI involved – so we don’t think a 2024 release is likely. We’d be more hopeful about a 2024 release, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it will be released in early 2025 instead.
It’s likely that Australia’s Golden Coast will once again be the chosen location for filming, having served well as the backdrop for the original film and also for Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Film fans in Australia keep a constant watch on that location for signs of anything that might be shooting there, so its highly likely that the first wind we get of the movie entering production will come from an Australian with a phone camera than an official announcement from anybody involved in the making of the movie. For that reason, we’d suggest that social media might be a better place to look for gossip about the film’s development than any of your normal entertainment channels. If the notorious “Mechagodzilla” shows up anywhere in the region in the near future, you can be sure somebody will leak pictures.
Guessing at what the film might contain at this early stage is a redundant effort, but there’s definitely scope for a much wider and deeper film than the original if the producers want to go down that route. The last film ended with King Kong as the ruler of the Hollow Earth and Godzilla reigning supreme as the undisputed King of the Monsters back in the “real” world. It’s fair to say that things didn’t go well for Kong towards the end of the movie’s running time, and we’ve thus far been offered little reason to believe that he’d be capable of beating Godzilla in a rematch. Like a boxer who doesn’t know when to call it quits, though, he’s coming back for another round – and we’re sure there are millions of people out there willing to pay for a front-row ticket to see the fight.
