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“Godzilla Minus Zero” blew the roof off Alice Tully Hall during its rapturous world premiere screening at the New York Film Festival. The long-awaited sequel to 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One” earned rave first reactions
from the press earlier in the day, and that adoration rolled right into the world premiere. The movie was met with multiple mid-screening applauses as the crowd went wild for all the kaiju mayhem on screen.
Ahead of its debut later this year, “Godzilla Minus Zero” has been rated R for “violent content/bloody images,” making it the first entry in the 72-year-old franchise to receive an R-rating. Director Takashi Yamazaki, returning to helm the sequel after 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One” became a roaring success, says securing the rating was “essential to the film.”
“Logically, as a studio — and even as a director — you want as many people from the general public to be able to see your film,” Yamazaki told Variety at the premiere Saturday afternoon. “So, an R-rating might seem like a barrier to entry, and conversations about, ‘Hey, could we have not gotten this down to PG-13?’ of course are going to happen. In spite of that, though, there were certain scenes that, for me as a director, were so essential to the film. Censoring it or cutting it was just not an option for me.”
Under MPA guidelines, viewers under 17 cannot attend an R-rated film without a parent or guardian, a restriction that has traditionally made the rating a commercial deterrent for studios releasing big-budget, four-quadrant films. That stigma has faded over the past decade, starting with the blockbuster success of 2016’s “Deadpool” ($782 million). In 2019, “Joker” ($1.07 billion) became the first R-rated film to cross the $1 billion threshold. That record was later broken by 2024’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” ($1.33 billion) — and more recently — 2026’s “The Odyssey” ($1.72 billion), which currently stands as the 17th highest-grossing film of all time worldwide.
“I think the R-rating, at one point, carried almost a negative connotation,” Yamazaki explained. “In more modern films, it actually creates a sort of expectation and excitement of, ‘Okay, well, they’re not censoring anything. The director and the cast’s voice is there, as is.’ So it is very encouraging to see other films who have preceded us that have already found a lot of success with the R-rating at the box office. Hopefully, we can continue that trend with ‘Godzilla Minus Zero.’”
Inside the world premiere screening, New York Film Festival director Dennis Lim acknowledged that the Godzilla franchise might not be the first thing people think of playing at a major film festival. And yet, “We thought it was about time to bring a giant monster movie here.”
Yamazaki took the stage to thunderous applause from the audience both before and after the screening, where he asked the crowd not to spoil any of the sequel’s many surprises on social media.
“You are the first to see this film,” the filmmaker said. “There are a lot of ‘Godzilla’ fans around the world, so let’s work together and do not do any spoilers. No spoilers, please! I am trusting all of you guys.”
Yamazaki also had the audience laughing while explaining how he never intended to create a sequel to “Godzilla Minus One.” Executives at Toho immediately started asking him about a follow-up movie once they saw the first cut of “Minus One,” a thought that made Yamazaki instantly nervous. It wasn’t until the movie opened in theaters and started to be celebrated around the world by audiences that the director realized a sequel would be a viable option.
“Toho executives are here now,” the director said. “Hopefully all your reactions tonight don’t have them wanting a third movie.”
