©Courtesy of Toho 

Seventy years after his debut in 1954, Godzilla is still wreaking havoc on the big screen. Toho Studios has announced that a new film featuring the iconic kaiju will be made, helmed by Takashi Yamazaki, who recently wrote and directed Godzilla Minus One. The “emergency announcement” from Toho merely stated the fact that the upcoming film had been greenlit, without revealing whether it would be a sequel to that production or an entirely new version.

Godzilla Minus One ended up being the most successful in the franchise’s history, winning an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, the first Japanese VFX team to be so honored. The film earned a monstrous sum globally, raking in more than $115 million, more than ten times its budget. It was the highest grossing Japanese film of 2023.

 

Ever before he made that acclaimed movie, Takashi Yamazaki had already established himself as a major player in Japan’s burgeoning film industry. Born in 1964, he was inspired to create special effects after watching such films as 1977’s Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which he enjoyed as a teenager. Yamazaki went on to win eight Japanese Academy Awards, as well as five Nikkan Sports Film Awards, two Hochi Film Awards, and an Asian Film Award.

Godzilla Minus One was the 37th Godzilla movie since the iconic monster made his debut in 1954, but it’s not related to the recent productions by Warner Bros. and Legendary’s Monsterverse. Set in post-WWII Japan, the film stars Ryunosuke Kaimiki as Koichi Shikishima, a kamizake pilot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a battle with Godzilla, who returns two years after the war to get his revenge. Shikishima leads a crew of war veterans who thwart the monster’s return with minesweepers. Though Shikishima succeeds in annihilating the kaiju, a piece of Godzilla’s flesh remains, which begins to regenerate under the ocean.

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