Warner Bros. announced yesterday that the upcoming sequel to the 2014 reboot of Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards, had been pushed from its March 22nd, 2019 release date to May 31st of the same year.
The third installment in what has been dubbed the Legendary Pictures MonsterVerse, preceded by Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island (2017), Godzilla: King of the Monsters will see the titular behemoth square-off against an array of Kaiju, including Mothra, Rodan and the three-headed King Ghidorah.
However, a title fight of this magnitude wasn’t always a possibility, as the monstrous trio belongs to Toho, the Japanese studio responsible for 29 Godzilla films, including the original 1954 movie. Thankfully, Legendary Pictures announced in 2014 that they’d acquired the rights to the three-headed dragon, giant imago moth and irradiated Pterosaur, making King of the Monsters, a reality.
And so, as we now draw closer to the sequel’s release, the marketing machine is starting to fire up and earlier today, Michael Dougherty (Trick r’ Treat, Krampus), who replaced Gareth Edwards in May 2016 as director, Tweeted the below image of a weather radar focusing on a hellish blob over the eastern United States, teasing something labelled “monster zero.”
Today’s weather. @GodzillaMovie pic.twitter.com/JueJK55s9U
— Mike Dougherty (@Mike_Dougherty) May 22, 2018
Fans might recall that the name in the header is drawn from another title for the 1965 Godzilla film, Invasion of the Astro-Monster, alternatively called Monster Zero stateside. Said movie sees Godzilla and Rodan sent into outer space to battle King Ghidorah, who an alien species on Planet X has dubbed “Monster Zero.” As such, it looks as if this will also be the name given to King Ghidorah in the upcoming sequel, and it’s him who the director’s teasing here.
Gojira meets Ghidorah when Godzilla: King of the Monsters crashes into theaters on March 22nd, 2019. It’ll be followed in quick succession by the all-consuming Godzilla Vs. Kong in 2020, which doesn’t lend big ol’ Gojira much time to catch his atomic breath.