Earlier this year, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire arrived on the 2024 movies schedule, arriving three years after the release of Godzilla vs. Kong and just two months after the end of the TV series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which can be streamed with an Apple TV+ subscription. The latest MonsterVerse movie has done quite well at the box office, and now a sequel is in development. Unlike the last two movies though, Adam Wingard will not direct it, but now his successor has been revealed, and it’s someone with interesting sci-fi cred.
Grant Sputore has been tapped to helm the Godzilla x Kong sequel, per THR. If the name doesn’t sound familiar to you, that’s because he’s primarily worked on commercials. That said, he made his feature filmmaker debut with the cyberpunk thriller I Am Mother, which was about a young girl being raised by a robot who was aiding in the repopulation of Earth following an extinction event. This flick starring Rose Byrne, Hilary Swank and Clara Rugaard premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019 and then was released to Netflix subscription holders the following June.
I Am Mother was met with positive critical reception, holding an 89% Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 75% Audience Score. The Godzilla x Kong sequel will be Sputore’s first movie since the Netflix release, but evidently Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures feel he can get the job done following Adam Wingard’s departure. Although Wingard had initially expressed interest in making a third Godzilla/Kong movie in order to form a trilogy, he decided to do A24’s Onslaught as his next project, and he also has the Face/Off sequel and the live-action Thundercats film adaptation coming up.
So now Grant Sputore is the fifth filmmaker who’s getting to leave his stamp on the cinematic side of the MonsterVerse, following Wingard, Godzilla’s Gareth Edwards, Kong: Skull Island’s Jordan Vogt-Roberts and Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ Michael Dougherty. Along with Sputore coming aboard, Shang-Chi and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse writer Dave Callaham has been tapped to pen the script. No release date has been set yet.
Although Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire was met with mixed reviews, as already mentioned, it’s shined brightly on the commercial front. At the time of this writing, it’s made over $567 million worldwide, making it the second highest-grossing MonsterVerse movie. Kong: Skull Island still holds the top spot, but Godzilla x Kong is roughly $1 million shy of surpassing the 2017 movie, so any day now we can expect it to be become the franchise’s new box office champion.
While we wait for the next big update for the Godzilla x Kong sequel, remember that the first four MonsterVerse movies can be streamed with a Max subscription. Also, Apple TV+ has ordered Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2, which is part of a deal between the streaming platform and Legendary that also encompasses “multiple spinoff series based on the franchise.”