The New Empire Box Office Projections Aiming for Monster Opening Weekend

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire will roar to a monster-sized box office this month according to first projections. With King Kong and the world’s most famous, fire-breathing kaiju on a collision course with the gigantic Skar King, this super-sized creature smackdown is looking to take a bigger bit of the box office than 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong.

The latest installment in Legendary’s MonsterVerse is forecast to make some serious noise when the film drops at the end of March. And, at the time of this writing, Boxoffice Pro is predicting The New Empire will make somewhere between $41 million and $50 million during its opening weekend domestically. Even if The New Empire only lives up to the low end of those numbers, it will still easily surpass the $31.6 million that Godzilla vs. Kong took on its opening weekend back in March 2021. Although the COVID-19 pandemic saw the movie receive a Day & Date release, the film did eventually make $470.1 million at the worldwide box office.

Should Boxoffice Pro’s numbers prove true and come to fruition, The New Empire is also expected to make between $91 million and $140 million during its theatrical run at the domestic box office. Godzilla vs. Kong only managed to bring in just over $100 million domesticallyby the time it dropped from cinemas.

The MonsterVerse is Proving to be a Big, Dumb, Moneymaker

Box office trends notwithstanding, it’s a great time to be a fan of kaijus. While each film entry in Legendary’s MonsterVerse has declined in profitability movie by movie, the critically acclaimed Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and Toho’s Oscar-nominated Godzilla Minus One have provided some of the best content in not only Godzilla’s 70-year history, but in the entire history of Giant Monster movies. Arriving on the back of this success, Godzilla x Kong could certainly capitalize on the current wave of popularity.

In 2014, director Gareth Edwards Godzilla officially launched Legendary’s MonsterVerse with a star-studded, dark and dramatic introduction. Godzilla made a staggering $93.2 million over its opening weekend, and while this some way ahead of recent movies, and the projection of The New Empire, the film ended its run on a middle-of-the-road $525 million worldwide. Even though the MonsterVerse’s second entry, Kong: Skull Island, didn’t fare as well over its opening weekend in 2017 ($61 million), the movie went on to make even more than Godzilla did three years earlier: $569 million globally.

Related

Why We Can’t Get Enough Godzilla

The giant kaiju/titan has been around since 1954 and shows no signs of stopping. Here’s why Godzilla is so popular.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters followed in 2019, but it posted the worst numbers for the MonsterVerse to that point, with a $48-million opening weekend and a total of $387.3 million. Things looked bleak for Godzilla vs. Kong in 2021, in no small part because of the pandemic. However, the “gloriously savage” MonsterVerse team-up, which finally gave fans plenty of big monsters bashing seven bells out of each other, bounced back to become one of the biggest hits of the pandemic era. With the two titular titans buddying up to take on a new threat in The New Empire, there is every chance that the movie will continue to maintain the momentum the franchise has built over the last several years.