The King of the Monsters is having a very big weekend. Toho’s Godzilla Minus Zero pulled in $14.5 million on Friday from 3,254 theaters in North America, and Saturday estimates put the film on course for an opening weekend of about $32 million, according to Deadline. That would make it the biggest opening weekend ever for a live-action foreign-language film in the United States and Canada.
The number is a giant step up from the last film. Godzilla Minus Zero is director Takashi Yamazaki’s sequel to Godzilla Minus One, the 2023 hit that won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. That film started with $11.4 million in December 2023 and legged out to $57.4 million in North America. It is also only the fourth non-English-language film ever to finish a weekend at No. 1 in North America, joining The Passion of the Christ, Hero and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle. Audiences are on board, giving the film an A CinemaScore and a 96 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and premium screens are doing much of the work, with IMAX and other large formats accounting for nearly three quarters of the gross. GKIDS, which is releasing the film in North America, had already set its own record with about $6 million in preview screenings before Friday even started.
In second place, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s The Cat in the Hat opened with $6 million on Friday from 4,003 theaters and is tracking toward a weekend of about $18 million. Bill Hader voices the Cat in the new take on the Dr. Seuss favorite, and families are the happiest customers so far, helping the film earn an A CinemaScore of its own. Trevor Decker News previewed the film’s arrival earlier this week and has followed it since the trailer that sent the Cat chasing a lost magical hat. As the first animated family film to open wide since September, it has the field mostly to itself until Disney’s Hexed arrives on November 25, so strong word of mouth could keep it playing well into the holidays.
Plenty of other new films are crowding in behind them. Angel Studios’ Drummer Boy, the faith-based Revolutionary War musical from the Smallbone brothers, is headed for about $7.9 million, the Indian epic Ramayana: Rise of a Legend is looking at roughly $7.3 million from the widest North American release an Indian film has ever had, and Searchlight’s Wild Horse Nine, with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, is tracking near $5.5 million.
Final weekend numbers arrive Monday, and estimates can still shift once Sunday crowds are counted. Either way, November is off to a loud start, and a subtitled Japanese import is leading the American box office into the holiday season.