‘Continue The MonsterVerse’ Is Trending As Fans Rally Around The Kaiju Franchise
The biggest movie in the world, in more ways than one, is Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire. The massive kaiju franchise has won the domestic box office for two weekends in a row and is currently the third highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide. It’s another bonafide hit, but fans aren’t assuming that another sequel is coming, so they’ve taken to social media to campaign for one.
As of this writing, #ContinueTheMonsterverse is a trending topic on Twitter, showing that a lot of fans are quite committed to the franchise and are hoping for more. The campaign is especially worth noting because, at this point, while there is no known sequel in development, there’s also been no indication that New Empire was set to be the final movie. So this isn’t a case of fans who are reacting to bad news, simply a case of fans who, largely unprompted, and asking for more.
That being said, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire was a movie that clearly was in early development more or less as soon as Godzilla Vs. Kong wrapped, though the movie wouldn’t be officially announced for a few months after the last feature’s release. We don’t know that more MonsterVerse is coming, so it’s not a bad decision to try and drum up support and make sure Legendary Pictures knows just how much fans love the series.
While the critical response to Godzilla X Kong was middling overall, our Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire review was solid and fans clearly love it. Between the box office numbers, a Rotten Tomatoes audience score over 90%, and the responses on social media using the hashtag, it’s not a shock that there would be people already calling for more. While it’s hard to guess where a sequel would take the story, it’s not exactly difficult to imagine a way that Godzilla and/or Kong could be brought back for another fight.
We don’t even need a story that includes Godzilla and/or Kong. The MonsterVerse was very much conceived as a “cinematic universe” not unlike the MCU, where the idea was that Godzilla and Kong would be introduced separately, before being brought together. While the franchise has focused on that union since then, there’s no reason we couldn’t get more films from other corners of the universe. There are certainly plenty of Toho monsters or other creatures who could potentially be part of a future film.
It seems likely that a new MonsterVerse film will be considered by Legendary and WB, regardless of what the fans are saying on social media. But of course, the fans will certainly help. People who are actively campaigning for more are the people who are likely to fill a theater if and when a new movie comes out.
