After Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island had done virtually identical business from both a critical and commercial perspective, the MonsterVerse would then stumble on the third installment. Despite anticipation for the movie being incredibly high thanks to several jaw-dropping trailers, Godzilla: King of the Monsters suffered from the poorest reviews yet, even though it took the criticisms of the first movie onboard by doubling down on the kaiju action, and also under-performed at the box office by failing to crack $400 million globally.
Godzilla vs. Kong, which is still currently scheduled for release in November, looks set to be the make-or-break movie for the entire franchise then. If it turns out to be a success, then the MonsterVerse will be back on solid footing, but if it fails to justify the massive investment, then Legendary could end up pulling the plug altogether.
The showdown between the iconic monsters has already been through extensive reshoots after the studio were said to be hugely unimpressed with an early test screening, which has only added extra pressure. And while there’s no word yet on where the MonsterVerse is heading after Godzilla vs. Kong, in a recent online watch-along, King of the Monsters director Michael Dougherty revealed that he’d love another crack at the franchise, and has a pretty interesting idea for what direction he’d take.
“As for how Ghidorah ended up trapped in the ice, I like to think he lost his last battle with Godzilla and got KO’d into freezing waters. I’d still love to do Godzilla B.C., where we finally see this ancient world of man and monster, like a modern day Ray Harryhausen flick. Or maybe we just go for it, and finally take humans out of the equation.”
The MonsterVerse has already been down the prequel route before with Skull Island, but a Godzilla movie set thousands of years ago sounds pretty awesome. It also sounds very expensive, given that these blockbusters cost about $200 million apiece without having to digitally recreate the ancient past. So unless Godzilla vs. Kong turns out to be a massive hit, then it seems like the idea of a Harryhausen-inspired kaiju flick is destined to remain a pipe-dream, no matter how cool the concept sounds.