Three years ago, Takashi Yamazaki and Toho surprised the world with “Godzilla Minus One,” an acclaimed new installment of the longest-running franchise in film history, which grossed nearly $114 million at the global box office — including $57.1 million in the U.S. and Canada — and became the first “Godzilla” film to win an Oscar.
now they are back “Godzilla Minus Zero,” A film that not only could reach even greater heights at the box office, but is currently projected to take the No. 1 spot this weekend from Warner Bros.’ “the cat in the Hat.” While the original “Godzilla Minus One” was a surprise hit in 2023 with a No. 3 opening with $11.4 million, followed by the Beyoncé concert film “Renaissance,” “Godzilla Minus Zero,” which will be supported by IMAX, is expected to triple that opening with a domestic opening weekend of $30-35 million.
It would become the fourth non-English film in US box office history to top the weekend charts. In February 2004, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was the first film to reach No. 1 in the US, earning a record $83.8 million. Although it was an American production, Gibson chose to shoot the gospel adaptation in Hebrew, Latin, and reconstructed Aramaic.
Six months later, during the final weeks of summer 2004, director Zhang Yimou’s Mandarin-language wuxia film “Hero” was released by Miramax and topped the charts with an opening of $18 million, still standing as one of the top 5 highest domestic grossing non-English films of all time.
Then, 21 years later, Sony/Crunchyroll’s “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle”, which was released in both English and Japanese dubs, grossed $70.6 million in September 2025, setting the all-time opening weekend record for anime films.
Although Godzilla has been part of the Hollywood franchise landscape through the Legendary-produced MonsterVerse — which will return next March with “Godzilla Before “Minus One”, the 2016 Toho film “Shin-Godzilla” had grossed less than $6 million in the U.S. In 1999, “Godzilla 2000”, released domestically by TriStar, had only grossed $10 million.
But between its early December release and subsequent streaming on Netflix and other platforms, “Godzilla Minus One” has reinvigorated interest in the Toho series beyond the dedicated fan base it has created in the West.
Combining a late 1940s setting that takes “Godzilla” back to its post-war Japan roots, while delivering possibly the scariest portrayal of a kaiju ever put on screen, “Minus One” sets the stage for “Minus Zero” to be a breakout sequel that could make it one of the top 3 highest-grossing non-English films of all time.
While critics are divided on whether it is better than its predecessor, they agree that “Minus Zero” is at least a very worthy successor to the film. 91% Rotten Tomatoes score. The question now is how much the film can garner audiences beyond the opening weekend, which will likely be driven by fans who saw “Minus One” during the opening weekend or during the holdover weeks after discovering it through word-of-mouth.
As always with breakout sequels, the ceiling of “Minus Zero” will be determined by how many unsuspecting moviegoers it can persuade to watch “Minus One” at home — it’s currently streaming on Prime Video — before heading out to buy tickets.
While there will be some competition from Amazon MGM’s “How to Rob a Bank” next weekend, “Godzilla’s” big competition for general audiences will come in two weeks from Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games: Sunrise at the Reaping,” which is expected to be the top-grossing film this month with stronger presales than its 2023 predecessor “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.”
As films like “Demon Slayer” and shows like “Squid Game” have shown, aversion to subtitles among mainstream audiences has waned compared to previous decades. And with critics praising “Minus Zero’s” kaiju battles, it’s possible that only some fans of the MonsterVerse “Godzilla” may be drawn to a theatrical sample of Toho’s original version of the series for the first time.
Warner Bros.’ animation return
If Godzilla claims a victory this weekend, it will be a victory over “The Cat in the Hat,” a Dr. Seuss adaptation that marks Warner Bros.’ return to theatrical animation, but currently it looks like it will be another uphill battle for the studio, with a domestic debut of only $20-22 million against a projected budget of nearly $100 million.
Long before David Zaslav decided to bring Warner Bros. into Hollywood’s ever-increasing consolidation wave, former studio heads Michael De Luca and Pam Abedy hired former DreamWorks chief Bill Damaske to revive the division known as Warner Animation Group.
After rebranding WAG to Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, Abedy, De Luca and Damasche greenlit a wave of projects that would bring animation back to the studio slate after a three-year absence, including the original animated musical “Bad Fairies”, an adaptation of Sanrio’s “Hello Kitty” and another Dr. Seuss adaptation, “Oh the Places You’ll Go!” From director Jon M. Chu.
But that rebranding also came with the infamous cost-cutting of “Coyote vs. Acme,” which grossed $101 million worldwide earlier this year after being acquired by Ketchup Entertainment.
With a major studio marketing campaign behind it along with a huge promotional campaign by lead voice actor Bill Hader, “The Cat in the Hat” should at least be able to outdo the “Looney Tunes” comedies that Warners dumped as it will be the family film of choice for parents whose kids are too young to watch the PG-13 “Wildwood” until Disney’s “Hexed” arrives this Thanksgiving.
But if “Cats” can’t grow its audience beyond that subset to hold up against “Hexed” on Thanksgiving, its closest comp on the high end might be the Sony animated film original “Goat,” which is on track to earn $195 million worldwide over Presidents Day weekend with a $27.2 million 3-day/$35 million 4-day cume. Early reviews of the film are mixedSome critics enjoyed Hader’s performance as The Cat and the decision to make a loose adaptation of Seuss’s children’s book, while other critics saw the decision as one that deprived the film of the spirit of its source material.
As always, it will take at least two weekends to really find out how much interest this family title is generating. If word-of-mouth among families is strong enough, “Cats” may be able to co-exist with “Hexed” and earn steady attendance from parents and kids, who will increasingly flock to theaters as its theatrical run expands inside and outside the Thanksgiving holiday window.
But if theatrical success does occur for this Seuss adaptation, it won’t be as immediate as Illumination’s “The Grinch,” which grossed $67.5 million through early November in 2018. Of course, the disparity can be chalked up to Illumination’s successful brand building with families through hits like “Despicable Me” and “The Secret Life of Pets” compared to Warner Animation’s wing, which has been dormant for years. But if “Cat in the Hat” doesn’t get the revived WBPA off to a good start, getting it up to speed is just one more thing to add to Skydance’s to-do list as it integrates Warner Bros.’ Its motion picture operations include an entire IP stable and over three dozen slated films.
A Hindu epic and a comedy political thriller
Two other films in targeted wide release will provide additional support at the bottom of the chart. Sony Pictures will release the Indian blockbuster “Ramayana: Rise of a Legend”, the first film from that country to receive the “Filmed for IMAX” label. Directed by Nitish Tiwari and produced by Namit Maholtra, CEO of VFX and animation studio DNEG, the two-part film is one of the most expensive films ever made in film history, with both installments reportedly having a combined production and marketing budget of $420 million.
“Ramayana,” a retelling of the classic Hindu epic of the same name, was produced not only to appeal to millions of moviegoers across its home country, dubbed in dozens of languages, but also to attract global Indian audiences in expatriate communities around the world, which is why Sony stepped in to distribute the film outside India.
But to truly succeed, both “Ramayan” films will have to join the ranks of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time, a list currently topped by the 2016 sports drama “Dangal,” which grossed nearly $305 million worldwide. In the US, where it is projected to take $6-10 million for a 4-day opening from 1,300 locations, “Ramayana: Part 1” will at least match the $28.1 million total that Hindi action film “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” earned earlier this year.
In a favor of domestic expertise, Searchlight Pictures will also release Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” a comedic political thriller about two CIA agents who travel to Easter Island in 1973 just before the Chilean government is overthrown by the U.S.-backed military. The film from the “In Bruges” director is projected to open to $7 million from nearly 1,000 locations.
That release strategy is a radical departure from the platform releases and slow rollouts of McDonagh’s previous films. In 2017, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” grossed $54.5 million domestically thanks to a theatrical run over four months during Oscar season, where it won two Academy Awards.
But in 2022, as the established awards season theatrical market declined due to aging core audiences and shorter windows, McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin” earned a modest $10.5 million using the same slow rollout release pattern. With the advent of Letterboxd over the last four years creating a new generation of enthusiastic cinephiles, “Wild Horse Nine” will at least surpass “Banshees,” though it remains to be seen how much the younger crowd will show up along with the older demographics that have shown up for McDonagh’s work in the past.