Godzilla: King of the Monsters is headed straight for us in 2019. Here's everything you need to know.
Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzillamovie did what Roland Emmerich's 1998 version couldn't do: successfully reboot the iconic franchise and one of the screen's greatest monsters for an American audience. Not only that, but in conjunction with Kong: Skull Island three years later, it launched the MonsterVerse, a shared universe of giant creatures drawing from both the King Kong mythos as well as the 60-year-old Toho Studios repertoire.
Godzilla 2 was soon announced and has eventually emerged as Godzilla: King of the Monsters, with the name itself a reference to the Americanized title of the very first movie in the Toho canon, 1954's Gojira. Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields, who recently worked together on Krampus (which Dougherty also directed), wrote the script. Since both Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of the Monsters are building up to Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020, Dougherty and Shields are now two members of a giant writers room mapping out the future of the MonsterVerse.
But Dougherty hasn't just written the sequel: he also occupies the director's chair for Godzilla: King of the Monsters following the departure of Mr. Edwards. This is good news as Dougherty, a genre devotee, also wrote and directed the cult Halloween classic Trick 'r Treat and co-wrote X2: X-Men United and Superman Returns.
One thing seems certain from all this: while the 2014 Godzilla was criticized for keeping the big green lizard largely offscreen for the first half of the film, this sequel is not making that mistake again. From what we've seen so far, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a spectacle featuring four titanic kaiju wreaking mass destruction on an epic, global scale. Which leads us to...
Godzilla: King of the Monsters Trailer
The final Godzilla: King of the Monsters has arrived!
Here are the other trailers released so far:
We broke down all the cool kaiju eggs we found in this trailer right here.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters Cast
First and best of all, as you can see above, Godzilla: King of the Monsters will introduce three of Toho's classic creatures to the American series for the first time ever: Rodan, Mothra and the three-headed King Ghidorah will all make their debut in the movie after being teased in a post-credits sequence at the end of Kong: Skull Island.
As for the human cast, Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown will star in the film, with Kyle Chandler (Bloodline) and Vera Farmiga (Bates Motel) as her parents. Also intriguing is the inclusion of Charles Dance, a.k.a. Game of Thrones' beloved Tywin Lannister, to the cast.
Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn are reprising their 2014 Godzilla roles as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, Vivienne Graham and Admiral William Stenz, respectively.
Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) and O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) will also appear.
Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) plays a mystery character who will apparently figure prominently in not only this movie, but the overall MonsterVerse. She has been described as a scientist who works -- like her mother and grandmother before her -- for the enigmatic Monarch agency, the secret government entity tasked with tracking ancient giant monsters lurking under the surface of the world's continents and oceans.
Elizabeth Ludlow is also in the cast. While details about Ludlow's character have yet to be revealed, she has been seen most recently on AMC's The Walking Dead, where she debuted in Season 7 as Arat, a loyal member of the brutal Saviors led by Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan. Ludlow also appeared in films such as 2017's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and 2016's Max Steel.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters Release Date
Godzilla: King of the Monsters will stomp your local movie theater to smithereens on May 31, 2019. That is a better release date than the originally planned March arrival. This is going to be a big movie in every sense of the word.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters Story
Here's the official synopsis:
The new story follows the heroic efforts of the crypto-zoological agency Monarch as its members face off against a battery of god-sized monsters, including the mighty Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan, and his ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah. When these ancient super-species—thought to be mere myths—rise again, they all vie for supremacy, leaving humanity’s very existence hanging in the balance.
The very first screen appearance of King Ghidorah, in 1964's Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, found Godzilla teaming up with the flying reptile Rodan and the giant caterpillar/moth Mothra to defeat the title beast. Whether that is ultimately how the story plays out in Godzilla: King of the Monsters remains to be seen, but the overt similarity between the two films seems intentional.
Variations on this concept have been used in other films in Toho's long-running kaiju series, including Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), the all-in monster rally Destroy All Monsters (1968), Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972), Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) and Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001). Ghidorah also showed up in the third of the recent animated Godzilla movies, Godzilla: The Planet Eater, which debuted on Netflix in January.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters Poster
Seriously, this is regal af...
We'll update this with more information as it becomes available.