‘Godzilla’ has proven that not only is he the King of the Kaiju, but he’s also the king of the box office! Overwhelmingly smashing the competition and landing in the #1 spot over the weekend, ‘Godzilla has proven that he is ready for a monster-sized follow up and a sequel is now in the works.

The iconic monster reboot film earned an impressive $93.2 million at the domestic box office and ranked second in highest opening weekend for 2014 coming behind ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (which earned $95 million) an ahead of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ (which opened with $91.6 million in its first weekend). Interesting to note is that ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ was released on this same weekend last year and only earned $83.7 million. And how did ‘Godzilla’ fair against that other Kaiju film that was all the rage last summer? It brought in almost $56 million more than ‘Pacific Rim’. With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are already planning a sequel!

Part of the big box office success was due to the fact that most movie goers who saw ‘Godzilla’ opted to see the reptilian monster in all its 3D glory accounting for 51% of the revenue. The film was also the top selling film in IMAX theaters this year bringing in $14.1 million (15% of the total domestic gross)!

Although the film has garnered mixed reviews, many have attributed the success of  ‘Godzilla’ to the studio’s marketing team who decided to focus more on the rampage and disaster caused by the Kaiju than advertising the film as a monster movie. Director Garth Edwards also feels that not showing the monster until the end of the film added to the suspense and success of the film. In an interview with MTV he explained:

“It was always the intention to incrementally build…Nowadays, you can do absolutely everything in a computer. A lot of films do. Even though, individually, you look at that shot in the trailer and you go ‘Aww, that’s amazing.’ You take this shot, ‘Aww, that’s amazing.’ If you put a thousand of them together, you kind of get a fatigue where you stop caring about what you’re seeing. I was more worried about committing that crime than the crime of ‘It’s 40 minutes. Where is he?’”

Whether or not Edwards will return to direct the sequel has not been announced, but he did state that if he did helm a sequel, he would use the “same kind of restraint” as he did with this one.

Unfortunately, Legendary and Warner Bros. don’t own the rights to Godzilla’s classic foes, so seeing him go up against Mothra, Rodan, Gigan, or even King Ghidorah may be out of the picture. It does mean, however, that the studios will get to come up with some new monsters for the giant reptile to battle (although if you were not enamored with the M.U.T.O.s, then this is disappointing news).

So are you excited to hear about a ‘Godzilla’ sequel? Who would you like to see Godzilla go up against and are you hoping Edwards returns to direct it? Let us know in the comments.

Directed by Gareth Edwards, ‘Godzilla,’ stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe,  Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, and Bryan Cranston.

Source: Deadline