Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire nabs the MonsterVerse’s biggest opening since 2014’s Godzilla
Godzilla x Kong far surpassed box office expectations
Aux News Godzilla
Much like King Kong once scaled the Empire State Building, he has once again come out on top with The New Empire. As predicted, Godzilla x Kong topped the box office this weekend, easily defeating that other movie empire, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, in its second week. Contrary to predictions, however, the MonsterVerse flick took home an estimated $80 million in its opening weekend, well over the $50 to $55 million it was expected to make.
That makes Godzilla x Kong the second-biggest debut for a MonsterVerse movie, following only the franchise-launching Godzilla (2014), which opened to $93 million at the domestic box office, according to Variety. There’s a significant asterisk in that the previous installment, Godzilla Vs. Kong, opened in theaters while streaming simultaneously on HBO Max in 2021, when the movie biz was still pandemic-plagued. That movie nevertheless managed to gross $474 million worldwide, an improvement over the previous installment Godzilla: King Of The Monsters (2019). But Godzilla x Kong made a tidy $114 million internationally this weekend, bringing its worldwide debut to $194 million, and putting it on track to surpass Godzilla Vs. Kong’s box office total.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a success beyond the MonsterVerse as well; it’s only a couple million short of the debut box office for the biggest domestic opening of the year, Dune: Part Two (at $82.5 million). In just its opening weekend, it’s the third-highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide behind the Dune sequel and Kung Fu Panda 4.
The box office needed a win, as 2024 has gotten off to a sluggish start. Per Variety, the beginning of the year saw box office revenue down 20% from 2023. However, Comscore puts this week’s ticket sales down just 6.3% from the previous year. As you can see from Box Office Mojo’s top ten for the weekend (below), that’s largely due to sequels and franchise entries, though we can’t underestimate the power of one really popular GIF.
Anyway, here’s your box office ranking from the weekend of March 31:
- Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
- Dune: Part Two
- Kung Fu Panda 4
- Immaculate
- Arthur The King
- Late Night With The Devil
- Tillu Square
- Crew
- Imaginary
26 Comments
At the end of the day, theatrical audiences crave certain types of movies that you cannot get on streaming. Yes, Godzilla x Kong, Dune: Part Two, Kung Fu Panda 4 may all be franchise films, but they all exist to be seen on the silver screen and are made in such a way to maximize the theatrical experience. Going to the movies is more of a luxury than ever before and much of the theatrical audience will only go see a film they think will reward their time and hard-earned money.
You’d think someone would have caught that the 9 and 10 box office rankings re-set to 1 and 2 after the newsletter signup plea breaks into the middle of the count, and either fix the numbers to continue, or move the final two rankings up with the rest of them, but it just happens. Every. Single. Time.
Sam might be gone, but the tradition of having the weekend box office list be messed up continues.
Is Sam gone?
Yes, he was laid off when AV Club was bought last week.
Good riddance.
He’s been whining about it on X all week 😂
Well…I kind of feel bad for the guy. Losing a gig is never a good feeling, and he got absolutely beaten about the head and neck every time his work was posted. I took my swings; I’ll cop to that. Still, not great.
I hope he didn’t take our attempts to destroy him too seriously.
He was one of two writers let go and is reportedly on social media complaining how they shit-canned the writer with “the most bylines” in the history of the AV Club from his “dream job.” I’m pretty sensitive about anyone losing their job but we’ve all worked with someone who was not only half-assing a paycheck but being the exhaustingly, witless class-clown while doing it. Some of the comments around here can be brutal in general but he was called out for poor writing with every single piece and somehow hung onto his job for a decade. I’ve been a Paste reader for sometime and the writing is generally solid. There was no way they were going to touch him with a ten foot pole.
And over on Paste they actually announce changes. AVC, Splinter, and Jezebel all ended up there, so maybe I need to consider checking out their stuff…
I saw his post, too. It’s amazing he lasted as long as he did at AV Club, but considering most of his tenure has seen a major dip in overall quality writing here maybe it isn’t so surprising. “Most bylines” is definitely a case of quantity over quality, but the guy must have grown some thick skin considering the torching he’d get on pretty much every mediocre article he got published.I’ve always liked Paste, definitely drifted towards their coverage the past few years, but the lack of community interaction kept me from sticking around much. Glad to hear they were maintaining the comments at AV Club, hopefully they come up with a better system than Kinja (what could be worse?).
Hopefully Paste’s Editors can fix that (and they’re keeping the community comments!)https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/paste-magazine/paste-media-acquires-av-clubOne of the first things we did, even before closing the deal to bring
The AV Club into our fold was to ensure that comments got turned back on
and that the history of commenting on the site was restored. One of the
things that makes The AV Club great is its community of readers who
keep the discussion going. In fact, we’re looking at bringing comments
back to Paste Magazine, as well.
I should have known it wasn’t Spanfeller turning the comments back on. He’s proven to be much to big a coward for that.
Maybe Dennis Perkins can come back here and review SNL!
*puts down newspaper* Wait till they get a load of me!
But will they free all of us Morlocks from the grey caverns?
Great to finally see the return of movies with no political bullshit weighing them down. None of these movies punish fans with a social justice agenda, and guess what? They’re doing great! We voted against feminist, LGBTQ and DEI propoganda with our wallets, and Hollywood got the message 😎
Ghostbusters “No Political Bullshit” 2024 in its second weekend made $6 million less than Ghostbusters 2016 in its second weekend. It’s honestly pretty sad that you care more about political point scoring than good movies doing well.
This comment is funny to me, because … well, mostly because it’s enormously stupid, but also, weren’t there a bunch of people whinging that the pink glowing spikes on Godzilla meant that they’d turned him gay?
Gay-Zilla is just fabulous! But I thought it was just the freakin’ frogs that were gay? I’ll have to go check with Alex Jones again, as soon as I feel that I need more right-wing insanity grifting.
Like, you know Dune is woke, right?
More importantly, Dune has cleared $600m worldwide and must surely be profitable, so Villeneuve probably will get the chance to make Messiah and finish his trilogy. And thank fuck for that, because despite events playing out in broadly the same manner that worked as an ending in previous adaptations (and presumably the original novel), he somehow managed to make it feel only marginally more conclusive than Part One.
But is it better than Godzilla ÷ Kong?
I’m glad Godzilla X Kong is doing boffo box office business. It would’ve raked in even more if they had the guts to make it a romance like Love Lies Bleeding. An ampersand is the symbol you want if they’re not necessarily shagging! Give us Kongzilla, cowards!
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2024/03/31/titans-multiply-in-godzilla-x-kong-the-new-empire/
They have a lot in common! For instance, how you read the titles. The X in the title of GxK makes no sense and if you put a comma after the first two words of LLB it serves as a plot summary.