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Terrible as it was, there was one good thing that came out of the 1998 American Godzilla movie. It was apparently so bad that franchise creator Toho Co. couldn’t bear to let it be the final on-screen appearance for the King of the Monsters, so the company made six more of its own Godzilla movies, culminating with 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars.

Now, after a 10-year break, Toho is going back to its deepest kaiju well, announcing that a new, Japanese-produced Godzilla film will start filming next year.

This time, though, the reason for waking up Godzilla isn’t the embarrassing disappointment of an American-made offshoot. Just the opposite, as the impetus is the impressive box office performance of Legendary Picture’s 2014 Godzilla. Legendary’s reboot has earned some US$525 million worldwide, including 32 billion yen ($267 million) at theatres in Godzilla’s birthplace of Japan.

Filming is expected to start next summer and finish sometime in the fall, with the domestic theatrical release scheduled for 2016. The new Japanese film has no story connection to the 2014 version, so Legendary’s MUTOs won’t be making any appearances.

▼ The lower-calorie Japanese diet, though, means moviegoers probably stand a better chance of seeing Godzilla’s neck this time around.

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Toho is yet to announce the new movie’s cast and ostensible villain monster, not has the company made any comment about whether or not the upcoming film is a standalone project or the jumping-off point for a new series of Japanese-made Godzilla movies. But while Godzilla, the character, is birthed by radiation, Godzilla movies come from ticket and merchandise sales, so provided that the big guy does as well at the box office in 2016 as he did in 2014, we might be seeing a lot of him over the next decade.

Source: Cinema Today
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