Excellent news for giant reptile fans: Takashi Yamazaki, who wrote, directed, and won an Oscar for the effects of Godzilla Minus One (pictured above), is returning to the Godzilla fold. Toho, the company that owns Godzilla, announced the news with an “EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT” tweet that gives only the barest-bones details, with “further updates to follow” at the end.
Presumably those updates will include details on whether or not this new film is a direct sequel to Godzilla Minus One, which definitely left the door open for a continued story.
2024 marks the 70th anniversary of Godzilla, and festivities included today’s rerelease of Godzilla Minus One, which had already been released in its original color form and in dramatic black and white (Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color). Leah Schnelbach loved Minus One, writing, “Godzilla Minus One takes Godzilla seriously. Godzilla is myth, metaphor, eldritch horror, divine judgement, and bureaucratic tragedy. He can be climate collapse, or the Bomb, or Terrorism, or War Itself, or Death Itself—but he’s also, always, an unknowable living being who wants to crush the life out of everything in his path.”
Toho’s Godzilla films are, of course, distinct from the American Godzilla films, the most recent of which was the awkwardly named Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Also awkwardly named—but really very good—is the related series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which will return to Apple TV+ sometime in the future.
