Legendary and Warner Bros. have big plans for the MonsterVerse well beyond this year's Kong: Skull Island. In 2019, the studios plan to release a Godzilla sequel titled Godzilla: King of Monsters. This is to be followed up by the MonsterVerse cross-over movie Godzilla vs. Kong, scheduled for release in 2020. And beyond that, who knows what mayhem may be unleashed?
King of Monsters thus far has landed a director in Michael Dougherty (taking over for Gareth Edwards) and a young, leading cast member in Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown. Now, according to a fresh report, the Godzilla sequel also has a date to kick off filming.
Omega Underground unearthed the news on Godzilla: King of Monsters, saying the movie is scheduled to go before cameras in Atlanta beginning on June 19th, 2017. The Atlanta location is an interesting bit of info as it had previously been reported that the Chinese owners of Legendary wanted to shoot the movie at their studios in Qingdao, China. Some filming could still happen in China but at least part of the movie evidently will be shot in the USA.
Godzilla has a long history in movies going back to 1954's original Godzilla, which was released in the USA under the title Godzilla: King of the Monsters! with additional footage starring Raymond Burr. Godzilla was always a guy in a rubber suit stomping on models of buildings and batting tiny fake wire-guided aircraft out of the air, until Hollywood tried to bring the monster into the CGI era with the ill-fated 1998 version starring Matthew Broderick. Godzilla was rebooted in 2014 by Gareth Edwards and received mixed-to-positive reviews.
It will always be hard selling purists on the idea of a computer-generated Godzilla, but purists really aren't the target audience for these movies. General audiences will stand for nothing less than state-of-the-art computer generated effects, and that's what they will get from the MonsterVerse. This year's Kong: Skull Island promises to deliver a whole bevy of new and unusual creatures alongside the iconic King Kong, and if the film succeeds, it could become a template for future Godzilla and Kong movies.
Godzilla: King of Monsters is still very much a mystery movie when it comes to plot details, but we should learn a lot more over coming months as cast members are added and information begins trickling out from the shooting locations and via promotional material. The movie is set to hit theaters March 22nd, 2019.
NEXT: Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island Connections
Source: Omega Underground
