Godzilla Minus Zero US Box Office: $13.5 Million Friday, A CinemaScore as Record $30 Million Opening Looms

Godzilla Minus Zero has done it in America too. The sequel to Takashi Yamazaki’s Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One took $13.5 million on its opening Friday in the United States and Canada, including $6.7 million from Thursday previews, across 3,254 theatres — and audiences loved it as much as the opening suggests.

Deadline reports the film is now tracking for a $30–33 million opening weekend. If it lands there, it will set the record for the biggest domestic opening ever by a live-action foreign-language film, comfortably passing Zhang Yimou’s Hero, which opened with $17.8 million back in 2004. It would also be the biggest debut ever for distributor GKIDS. Worldwide, the opening is still tipped at around $60 million. All figures are trade estimates.

Then came the grade that suggests this is no opening-weekend flash. Opening-night audiences gave the film an A CinemaScore — the same grade its predecessor earned, and a rare mark for a non-English-language release. As box-office analyst Luiz Fernando noted, an A usually points to a long theatrical run, and CinemaScore remains one of the best predictors of whether audiences keep showing up after opening weekend. Critics agree: the film sits at 91 per cent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, a shade below Minus One’s 99 per cent.

The home market set the tone first. The film opened in Japan on November 3, Godzilla Day, selling 590,000 tickets for ¥910 million — around $5.7 million — the biggest opening day ever for a live-action film in Japan, and its three-day total reached ¥1.38 billion, roughly $8.7 million. The R rating — a first for the franchise, for “some violent content/bloody images” — has not slowed it down anywhere.

The economics remain the story. Minus One was made for just $15 million and grossed more than $110 million worldwide on its way to an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. If Minus Zero opens at three times its predecessor’s debut, it proves again that this franchise’s advantage is not budget but craft — a Japanese-language film topping the American chart on scale and emotion alone. Yamazaki has said he is “fifty-fifty” on a third film; this weekend will decide it for him. Our report from this morning: https://filmverse.in/godzilla-minus-zero-japan-opening-record-60-million-global-opening/

Watch the official final trailer below:

Godzilla Minus Zero, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, runs 135 minutes and is the first Japanese production ever filmed for IMAX. It arrives in India on November 20 through PVR INOX Pictures. Our India release-date report: https://filmverse.in/godzilla-minus-zero-india-release-november-20-ramayana-imax/

Sources: Deadline via Fiction Horizon and ComicBasics, Boxoffice Pro, Rotten Tomatoes — all box-office figures are trade estimates.