Clearing up a few KotM issues
Seeing a lot of panic and despondency in the MonsterVerse fandom over KotM’s reviews and box office performance, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to try to look at things with a level head.
First of all, is King of the Monsters a box office bomb? No.
The term ‘box office bomb’ gets thrown around way too often these days, but really it only applies to movies that fail to turn any kind of profit by the end of their theatrical run. A recent example of this is the Hellboy reboot - it had a production budget of $50 million and yet only made $43 million before being pulled from theatres - that’s a bomb. By contrast, KotM cost $170 million to produce and it’s already made that back in 3 days.
Second, is KotM underperforming? Only a little.
The early US domestic projections for KotM were around $50-55 million opening weekend - less than the openings for Godzilla 2014 and Skull Island. People thought this was rather low and as release neared some estimates grew larger, with some predicting as high as $230M worldwide opening weekend. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t exactly soar that high, with takings of $47M domestic and $177M worldwide. It’s below those lower estimates, but not by much.
Is the movie doomed? Way too early to tell.
The reality of moviemaking is that producing a film is only one half of the equation - you have to market it too, and modern blockbusters cost a lot to market. As a rule of thumb, a big summer tentpole has to earn anywhere from 2-3x it’s production budget to turn a profit. This means KotM has to earn something between $340-510 million worldwide to actually make money. Godzilla 2014 made $529M from a $160M budget and Skull Island made $566M from a $180M budget. That means KotM could come in as the lowest earning MonsterVerse movie and still turn a profit, so it’s not a disaster yet.
If KotM flops does that mean the MonsterVerse is dead? Definitely not.
While the hype train for KotM was leaving the station, Godzilla vs Kong was already filming, and by now is into post-production. That movie is definitely coming, and you can bet WB & Legendary will be looking at KotM’s performance when it comes to figuring out GvK’s marketing strategy. Regardless, that movie is coming out next year, and all eyes will be on that film as to whether the MonsterVerse continues.
