GKids, the American film distributor subsidiary of Toho, has set a new company box office record with “Godzilla Minus Zero,” which is leading the box office with a $31.6 million opening weekend from 3,254 locations.
That is nearly triple the $11.4 million opening of the kaiju sequel’s December 2023 predecessor “Godzilla Minus One” and makes it the fourth non-English film to reach No. 1 on the U.S. weekend box office charts.
For GKids, this passes the $13 million opening record it set in 2023 with Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron.” It is also the second highest opening for a live-action non-English film behind only “The Passion of the Christ,” which was performed in Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic and opened to $83 million in 2004.
With this start, “Godzilla Minus Zero” is well on pace to pass the $57.1 million U.S. run of “Minus One,” as it is enjoying excellent word-of-mouth with an A on CinemaScore and 90% critics and 96% audience scores.
On top of this, streaming site JustWatch says that “Minus One” has become the most-watched film on any streaming platform this week, signaling that “Minus Zero” might avoid a frontloaded run thanks to moviegoers who may have missed its predecessor three years ago but are looking to get caught up.
Taking second is Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s “The Cat in the Hat” with a $20.5 million domestic and $30.5 million global opening. It’s another uphill battle for Warner Bros. to turn a theatrical profit as the Dr. Seuss adaptation will have to lean on strong reception from family audiences to leg out in the weeks ahead and build up interest among parents and kids ahead of Thanksgiving, when it will face competition from Disney’s “Hexed.”
In third is Sony Pictures’ “Ramayana: Rise of a Legend,” the first part of a two-part Indian epic that has earned a $9 million 3-day/$12.1 million 4-day opening. That puts it just a couple steps below the $14 million 4-day opening of Hindi action film “Dhurandar 2: The Revenge,” which grossed $28.1 million in the U.S. earlier this year.
More to come…