“Godzilla vs. Kong” earns $9.6 million on first day in US cinemas

“Godzilla vs. Kong” made $9.6 million in US cinemas on Wednesday, 31 March 2021, its first day of theatrical release. Variety reports that the film showed in 2,409 venues in the country on its opening day with the number of venues expected to go up to 3,064 by Friday.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many films have not had the benefit of cinema earnings. However, with restrictions starting to ease up in several locations, film studios began taking advantage of this.

For example, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi action-thriller “Tenet” had been delayed three times until it was re-released in cinemas in the US on 5 March 2021. “Tenet” screened in 2,800 cinemas but the MonsterVerse film is about to do better than this in a matter of days.

However, while the US has about 94% of its cinemas open, they are mostly still running at reduced capacities in line with social distancing regulations.

“Godzilla vs. Kong” is far from having the biggest opening weekend of the pandemic as its $9.6 million earnings is surpassed by “Tom and Jerry” ($14 million) and “Wonder Woman 1984” ($16.7 million). Still, the film is performing better than what analysts expected.

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Before its US release, the film entered cinemas worldwide on 24 March 2021 (one week earlier) and made $70 million in China. As of when this article was published, its current earnings sit at a staggering $132.7 million.

“Godzilla vs. Kong” has a production budget of about $160 million to $200 million and was made available on HBO Max the same day it entered cinemas in the US. It has positive ratings on film critic websites. For example, 217 critics gave it an aggregated score of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, while it got 67/100 on Metacritic from 47 critics.

Fans who saw the film were asking for a post-credit scene which would likely set up a sequel or give extra information. Director Adam Wingard told SyFy Wire that they shot a post-credit scene, “but then we ended up using it in the movie,” he said.

Wingard also added, “one of those things where we shot it as one idea, and we got into editorial and realized ‘we need a moment at a certain point in the movie,’ [so] we ended up taking that footage and using it in a different context in the movie and it really, really worked for us.” He did not reveal which parts these were.

For those who hoped to catch a glimpse of what next to expect from the Godzilla or King Kong film franchise through post-credit scenes, the director confirmed that the future is not yet certain. There is no plan ongoing for continuing the film series, and he thinks removing a post-credit scene was the right choice.