It’s funny to think that after 70 years of the Godzilla franchise, we’ve reached a point where not only do Japan and Hollywood have a parallel run of the series going, but America is now partaking in the more schlocky, monster action aspects while Japan’s last two films have been prestigious award winners. Nevertheless, it’s not just Godzilla’s franchise now, but cinema legend King Kong as well. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire features a second meeting of the gargantuas after they clashed in 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong. But will the MonsterVerse duo end with this upcoming film? Director Adam Wingard is hoping not.
Deadline reports that Wingard address future plans for the two monsters continuing to crossover at the premiere of Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire. On the subject of a possible follow-up, Wingard says, “Only time will tell. I think the seductive thing as a filmmaker when you’ve done two movies is to complete it as this trilogy — that’s always what everybody expects.” The director continues, “We’ll see. It really depends on how the movie does. I think that there’s a lot of really cool ideas we have [about] where we would go with it. I’m open to it and excited for what the future brings.”
Wingard would go on to reveal that “ever since I was a little kid, I was obsessed with monster movies.” He reflects that as he got older, his perspective of the movies would notably change as his viewing of childhood favorites would refine. His sensibilities as a filmmaker would also inevitably evolve as he matured. However, for the second move with Godzilla and Kong, he would think back to his younger days and tried “to retain all these thoughts and ideas that I had.” He continued, “I knew that I needed to stylistically do something I’ve never seen before, which was tell a film from that monster POV that I’d always wanted to see.”
When JoBlo got to spend some time with Wingard, he elaborated more on that concept, “One of my other big influences is the movie They Live, that’s my favorite film of all time. The thing I love about They Live is that the best sequence in the movie is not about the hero versus the villain. It’s the heroes fighting each other because of a misunderstanding. And so this rematch is more complicated than that, and you’ll see what I mean when you understand the way they lived and how they met up again in this film. So, for the world here, this is the payoff, really, of what this inspiration wall set up.”