Godzilla probably won’t go down as the highest grossing movie of 2014, but as of now, it boasts the single highest grossing day of the year in the United States. As of this evening, it can now say the same thing about China too.
Despite having significantly more people, the Chinese box office does not wield the same money-making power as the one in the United States. That being said, particularly exciting movies can generate quite a bit of change—like Godzilla proved today when it brought home $10.9 million, according to Variety. That was enough to edge out previous benchmarks X-Men: Days Of Future Past and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, though exactly how well it will hold remains to be seen.
With the first day in Chinese cinemas now complete, Godzilla has officially opened in every foreign territory, save Japan. Given the country’s storied history with the beast, there should be quite a bit of money to make in that territory. Beyond that, however, there should also be quite a bit of scrutiny related to both how the material is handled and hilariously, how fat the creature is.
With almost $400 million in worldwide grosses, Godzilla is most definitely a hit. Considering its reported $160 million budget before marketing expensive, however, it probably still has a bit of distance it needs to go in order to turn a real profit for the studio. Such is the trade-off with effects driven event films. They play very well all around the world, but they need to have real legs and real staying power in order to generate any kind of profit. This one will get there, however, and Warner Bros is so confident of it, executives have already started work on a sequel.
Exactly what the sequel might feature or who will be involved is anyone’s guess, though Aaron-Taylor Johnson seems pretty confident he’ll be in it. I would only put a soft maybe on that, however. He and Elizabeth Olsen were fine enough, but they really weren’t given enough to work with for fans to build any kind of real relationship with their characters.
We’ll let you know how the film does when it finally hits Japanese theaters on July 25.
