Warner Bros. and Legendary are certainly betting heavy on the continued success of their cinematic Monsterverse—with Godzilla: King of the Monsters still more than six months away from its May 31, 2019 release date, they’ve finalized just about everything in the next film in the series: Godzilla vs. Kong, and the movie has begun production. This film will fuse the continuities we’ve seen in Legendary’s 2014 Godzilla with the version of King Kong seen in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island. And as of today, we finally have a proper synopsis. It reads:
In a time when monsters walk the Earth, humanity’s fight for its future sets Godzilla and Kong on a collision course that will see the two most powerful forces of nature on the planet collide in a spectacular battle for the ages. As Monarch embarks on a perilous mission into uncharted terrain and unearths clues to the Titans’ origins, a human conspiracy threatens to wipe the creatures, both good and bad, from the face of the earth forever.
Kaiju geeks like myself will no doubt be wondering how the likes of King Kong could be considered a more powerful “force of nature” than the titanic King Ghidorah that will appear in director Mike Dougherty’s King of the Monsters, but that will be director Adam Wingard’s challenge to figure out. Helming by far his biggest film to date, we’ll be hoping there’s more DNA from The Guest and You’re Next involved in Godzilla vs. Kong, rather than the terrible remake of The Blair Witch Project that Wingard also directed. His first task will no doubt he figuring out how to transform the much smaller Kong we saw in Skull Island into a beast the same size as the 355-foot high Legendary Godzilla.
Godzilla vs. Kong stars Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Jessica Henwick and Julian Dennison, with Kyle Chandler and Demián Bichir. The inclusion of Millie Bobby Brown in the cast list has to be considered something of a spoiler, considering that it tells us she’ll presumably be surviving the events of King of the Monsters. Wingard, meanwhile, is directing from a script by Terry Rossio (Pirates of the Caribbean). Filming is taking place in Hawaii and Australia.
Godzilla vs. Kong is tentatively scheduled for release on May 22, 2020, in both 3D and 2D.