Legendary Pictures’ Monsterverse movies may be relegated to mindless popcorn action, but fans were blown away by Godzilla Minus One back in 2023 when it managed to win Best Achievement in Visual Effects plus several nominations for directing and screenwriting.
Director Takashi Yamazaki has since been quiet after a stellar year of wins, but it looks like he’s ready to come back to his established period setting of the world of giant kaiju—specifically Godzilla.
Godzilla Minus One Sequel Already in Production with Bigger Budget
As confirmed with Variety, Yamazaki is already hard at work with his follow-up to Minus One. No specifics have been revealed about the next project, but it’s said that Yamazaki is already working on the screenplay as well as the storyboards for the sequel.
With the first film managing to be a huge success with just a budget of $15 million, Yamazaki is expected to have a much larger budget for this sequel, but it’s still unclear to where that money is going to go.
If anything, part of the marvel of Godzilla Minus One’s VFX was the quality despite the meager budget, but hopefully Yamazaki has enough experience to know how to spend the money wisely as compared to several huge productions that manage to blow a lot of the budget and time on VFX that doesn’t even manage to make it into the final film. Marvel Studios has been known to be a top offender when it comes to these ridiculously high demands from VFX artists.
The Success of Godzilla Minus One
Though the Godzilla films have managed to evolve into these giant monster fight battles, Minus One has managed to break the mold with its story and surprising period setting.
Rather than sell the movie on the idea that Godzilla would be fighting another giant kaiju, Godzilla Minus One brings the story back to the franchise roots and has a movie that follows regular people struggling to get back on their feet after the discovery that Godzilla is a real creature that can cause real damage.
Besides the fact that Godzilla looked amazing in the film, the movie also brought home the metaphor that Godzilla was originally used for, which was the uncontrollable chaos of war. Rather than have another monster take on Godzilla in the movie, Minus One saw several people, with their own personal traumas, coming together to help defeat the giant monster with their own wit and hard work.
What Could the Sequel Be About?
It’s not clear what a sequel to Minus One could be a bout, but it’s possible that Yamazaki could continue pulling on the thread that Godzilla is supposed to represent war and nuclear destruction. Sure they were able to defeat him in the first movie, but what if he came back several years later bigger and more powerful?
There’s also the slippery slope of introducing more monsters for Godzilla to team up with or fight, but with Legendary Pictures already pulling that thread with their Monsterverse films, maybe Yamazaki will want to keep an original direction with Minus One.