Godzilla isn't just the king of the monsters: He's the king of the box office, too.
"Godzilla Minus Zero," the latest Japanese entry in the long-running monster franchise, topped the North American box office this weekend with an impressive $31.6 million debut, according to estimates released by Rentrak on Sunday, Nov. 8.
That represented the biggest opening weekend any Japanese "Godzilla" film has ever had in the United States. In fact, the debut set a new record as the largest opening weekend for any live-action foreign-language movie in North America, according to Variety. The record for biggest foreign-language opening in general is held by the Japanese animated movie "Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle," which grossed $70.6 million in its 2025
U.S. debut, Deadline notes.
The record opening suggests the Japanese-language "Godzilla" movies are at the peak of their popularity in the United States, more than 70 years after the original 1954 classic that introduced the iconic monster, and that subtitles are not a barrier to success for the franchise in North America.
The numbers also indicate that both American and Japanese Godzilla movies can successfully coexist at the box office. After all, a separate series of English-language "Godzilla" movies produced by Legendary Pictures has been underway since 2014, with the latest entry, "Godzilla x Kong: Supernova," set for release in 2027. The most recent American movie to star Godzilla, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire," was a hit, opening to $80 million in 2024.
"Godzilla Minus Zero" is unrelated to those movies: It's the direct follow-up to "Godzilla Minus One," a standalone reboot from Toho released in 2023. "Minus One," which centered on a former kamikaze pilot struggling with PTSD after a Godzilla encounter, received some of the best reviews of any "Godzilla" movie to date, and it became the first entry in the series to win an Academy Award, for best visual effects. Reviews for "Godzilla Minus Zero," which held its premiere at the New York Film Festival in September, were similarly positive.
"Minus Zero" improved on the already strong box office performance of "Minus One," which opened to $11.4 million in North American theaters in 2023 and finished its run having grossed $57 million domestically.
Coming in at No. 2 on the weekend box office chart was "The Cat in the Hat." The animated kids movie based on the Dr. Seuss classic, starring Bill Hader as the voice of the titular character, had a muted $20.5 million opening. It was a fairly underwhelming start: For comparison, the 2003 live-action "Cat in the Hat" movie starring Mike Myers opened to $38 million, unadjusted for inflation, while the 2018 animated version of Dr. Seuss' "The Grinch" debuted with $67.6 million.
In third place was "Drummer Boy," a historical musical from Angel Studios that grossed $9.3 million.
The buzzy Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" also fared well again in its fourth weekend, grossing another $8.9 million and coming in at No. 4. The movie already broke records with the biggest opening weekend for a non-music documentary since 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11," and it has now grossed more than $70 million in North America. With Oscar nominations likely, "You Can See Everything" will go down as one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Godzilla Minus Zero' smashes a major box office record
