Godzilla Minus Zero smashes a 22-year record in America, and in Australia the top two films are not in English

A Japanese monster film made for a fraction of a Hollywood budget has rewritten the North American record books, and Australian cinemas have just had a weekend unlike any before it.

Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to the Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, took US$31.6 million across 3,254 North American cinemas in its opening weekend, the largest debut on record there for a live-action film not in English. Worldwide it opened to about US$63 million, the biggest global result of the weekend.

In Australia, cinema advertiser Val Morgan said it was the first time two foreign-language films had held the top two places across a weekend. The Hindi-language Ramayana led with $2.7 million from 117,000 admissions; Godzilla Minus Zero, which opened here on Thursday 5 November, was second with $1.6 million from 55,000 admissions.

“This weekend shows how much Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse audiences are shaping cinema,” Val Morgan Cinema managing director Guy Burbidge said.

How big is the American record?

The previous mark for a live-action foreign-language opening in North America belonged to Hero, the Jet Li martial arts film, at US$17.9 million in 2004. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin, opened far higher that year but is usually counted separately. Animation still holds the overall foreign-language record: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle opened to US$70.6 million.

The film also set a record for its American distributor GKIDS, a Toho company best known for Studio Ghibli releases, passing The Boy and the Heron’s US$13 million. IMAX screens alone brought in US$21.3 million worldwide, the biggest IMAX opening ever for a Japanese film, and IMAX called it the first Japanese release filmed for its cameras.

Who were the Australian audiences?

Two in three Australian cinema-goers that weekend were aged 18 to 39, Val Morgan said, and admissions were up 20% on the same weekend last year, with the year to date up 19%. Ramayana’s opening was the second-biggest for a Bollywood film in Australia, behind only Dhurandhar: The Revenge. Godzilla Minus Zero recorded the third-biggest Japanese opening and the biggest for a Japanese live-action film here.

For cinemas fighting streaming, the lesson is pointed: the weekend’s biggest crowds came for films made far from Hollywood, for audiences Hollywood often treats as secondary.

What is the film about?

Writer and director Takashi Yamazaki, who also supervised the visual effects, sets the story in 1949. Japan, still rebuilding after the war, faces the three-headed King Ghidorah, and Godzilla returns to fight it. It opened in Japan on 3 November, the anniversary of the original 1954 film, and took about 2.7 billion yen (about US$17 million) in its first days there.

Its predecessor, Godzilla Minus One, made for under US$15 million, won the Academy Award for visual effects and became the most successful Japanese Godzilla film, with about US$116 million worldwide.

How did Hollywood’s big release do?

Warner Bros’ animated The Cat in the Hat, with Bill Hader voicing the title role, opened to US$20.5 million in North America and US$30.5 million worldwide, on a reported production cost of more than US$80 million. Its global opening was less than half of Godzilla’s.