"Godzilla Minus Zero" opens at No. 1, one of the biggest debuts ever for a Japanese-language film in the US

"Godzilla Minus Zero," the sequel to the Academy Award-winning "Godzilla Minus One," opened at No. 1 at the North American box office this weekend, taking in an estimated $31.6 million over three days and posting one of the strongest debuts ever recorded in the United States for a Japanese-language film. The result, reported Sunday by Box Office Mojo's weekend chart and corroborated by The Numbers' box-office database, came in near the top of pre-release forecasts and comfortably ahead of Warner Bros.' animated "The Cat in the Hat," which opened in second place.

A wide opening, nearly triple its predecessor's

Distributed by GKIDS in a deal with the Japanese studio Toho, "Godzilla Minus Zero" opened in 3,254 theaters, including IMAX screens, and finished the weekend with roughly $9,700 per location. That put its domestic debut at close to three times the $11.4 million opening of 2023's "Godzilla Minus One," which went on to gross $57.1 million in the United States and Canada and $116 million worldwide over its run, according to the same box-office trackers. Combined with its earlier opening in Japan, "Godzilla Minus Zero" has taken in roughly $63 million worldwide in its first few days, with the domestic market accounting for just over half of that total.

The film also broke records at home. Local trade reporting from Japan, where Toho released the film November 3 to coincide with Godzilla Day, described an opening-day gross about double that of "Minus One" at the same stage of release. GKIDS, in its original announcement of the release plan, called the simultaneous Japan-and-North-America rollout a first for a Japan-produced "Godzilla" film, noting that the November 6 date would follow Toho's Japanese opening by only three days. Weekend-to-weekend, box-office trackers put the film's drop from Friday to Saturday at roughly 35 percent and from Saturday to Sunday at about 20 percent, a steadier-than-average hold for a wide opener and one suggesting the film is drawing repeat and word-of-mouth business beyond its opening-night audience.

Riding on an Oscar-winning predecessor

The sequel's commercial reception is inseparable from the pedigree of the film it follows. "Godzilla Minus One," made for a reported budget of less than $15 million, became the first Godzilla film nominated for an Academy Award and went on to win Best Visual Effects at the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024, beating effects-heavy studio tentpoles including "The Creator" and "Napoleon." The Academy's own record of that ceremony credits director and visual-effects supervisor Takashi Yamazaki, along with Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima, with the win — the first time a non-English-language film had taken the category.

Yamazaki returns as director, screenwriter and visual-effects supervisor on "Godzilla Minus Zero," which is set in 1949, two years after the events of the first film, and follows the Shikishima family as Japan's postwar recovery is disrupted by the discovery that Godzilla was never fully destroyed. GKIDS and Toho have promoted the sequel as the first Japanese production to be "Filmed for IMAX," shot entirely with IMAX-certified digital cameras, according to the distributor's own production notes released ahead of the trailer. The film had its world premiere on September 26 as the Spotlight Gala selection of the 64th New York Film Festival, an honor confirmed on the festival organizer's own program listing.

Who benefits, and the historical company it keeps

The opening is a significant win for GKIDS, the New York-based arthouse and animation distributor that Toho acquired in 2024 and has since used as its vehicle for bringing "Godzilla" titles to American theaters, including a 2024 remastered theatrical rerelease of "Shin Godzilla." It is also a notable result for exhibitors heading into a crowded late-autumn release calendar, and for IMAX, which supported the film's rollout across large-format screens and stood to gain proportionally more from a release built, and marketed, around that format from the outset.

Trade reporting by TheWrap framed the debut against a short list of non-English-language films that have topped the American box office outright: "The Passion of the Christ" in 2004, with an $83.8 million opening that remains the record; Zhang Yimou's "Hero," which opened to $18 million the same year; and last year's anime hit "Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle," which bowed to $70.6 million. "Godzilla Minus Zero" does not approach those totals, but its $31.6 million opening nonetheless ranks among the larger debuts a Japanese-language release has managed in the United States, well ahead of prior "Godzilla" entries from Japan such as "Shin Godzilla," which grossed under $6 million domestically in its original 2016 run.

Reaction and what comes next

Reviews have been largely positive, with aggregated critical scores in the low 90s on Rotten Tomatoes as of the weekend. GKIDS president David Jesteadt, in the distributor's release announcement, framed the rollout as a chance for audiences to see the film in a theatrical setting the studio built it for.

"GKIDS is proud to bring 'Godzilla Minus Zero' to North American audiences," Jesteadt said, adding that the film should be experienced "in its fullest theatrical glory."

How the film holds up in subsequent weekends will be the clearer test of its commercial staying power, particularly against a dense run of new releases. Amazon MGM's "How to Rob a Bank" opens next weekend, Lionsgate's "The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping" arrives two weeks after that, and Disney's "Hexed" is scheduled for the Thanksgiving corridor — all competing for the same screens that "Godzilla Minus Zero" currently holds at nearly full capacity. GKIDS has not yet announced release plans beyond North America and Japan for the sequel, and the distributor has likewise not said whether it intends to pursue a further installment should the film's run extend its predecessor's crossover success into another franchise entry.