Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus Zero earned more than half of Godzilla Minus One’s entire $57.1 million domestic run in its opening weekend. Its Nov. 6-8 debut across 3,254 U.S. and Canadian theaters finished at $30,587,672, below Sunday’s $31.6 million studio estimate.
That opening is the largest for a live-action foreign-language film in North America, passing Hero’s $17.8 million. There is an exception if The Passion of the Christ counts as foreign-language: it opened to $83.8 million in 2004.
Minus Zero is the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX. Premium large formats, including Dolby, supplied 74% of ticket sales, with IMAX contributing $12.7 million domestically, about 40% of the opening.
The sequel also gave distributor GKIDS, Toho’s North American arm, a company-record domestic opening, passing The Boy and the Heron’s $13 million debut.
