The King of the Monsters will return, and he may look familiar (and justifiably pissed off) when he does. This morning, Japanese film studio Toho dropped a short announcement via Twitter confirming news that Godzilla fans had been hoping to receive: Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki will return to helm, write and supervise VFX on another Godzilla film, and production has been greenlit. The short video announcement can be seen in the Twitter post below.
This is huge news for the Godzilla franchise, given the earth-shaking success of Minus One, the first Godzilla film ever nominated for an Academy Award, among its many other plaudits. Where other recent Japanese Godzilla films in the current generation such as Shin Godzilla had also received critical acclaim, Minus One was able to break through in a way that no other Godzilla movie has done to the mainstream pop culture of other international markets, with audiences wowed not only by its action and visceral destruction but by the novelty of human characters who were for once strong enough to carry the franchise on their backs. The story of Minus One, built around the collective struggle of postwar Japan to rebuild itself from near destruction, touched a chord that has rarely been seen in the series since the original Gojira in 1954.
That means there will no doubt be intense interest and speculation in Yamazaki’s follow-up film, beginning with the obvious question: Is this a Godzilla Minus One direct sequel? A Minus Two? There haven’t been any direct sequels in the recent Japanese chronology of the series, but this is one case where it really would seem to make sense to continue on with the story of pilot Shikishima, who played a role in the collective defeat of Godzilla. Of course, the monster won’t stay “dead” for long, and there’s also the question of his de facto wife Noriko, who was spared death during Godzilla’s destruction, but seemed to have been infected with some form of contagion from the monster in the process. That moment at the close of Godzilla Minus One provides obvious sequel bait.