Box Office: ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ Tracks To $60 Million Worldwide — Ahead Of The Cat

The weekend's box-office race has an unlikely favourite. Godzilla Minus Zero, Takashi Yamazaki's sequel to the Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, is forecast to gross $25–30 million in North America and more than $30 million from 23 international territories — roughly $60 million worldwide — in 3,250 North American theatres including all IMAX screens, per Deadline's preview reporting. Every figure in this story is a forecast or a tracking number; no weekend results exist yet.

The Japan Number

The sequel opened in Japan on November 3 — Godzilla Day — to $5.7 million (¥910 million) and more than 590,000 admissions, up 201 percent on Minus One's first day. Toho calls it a live-action opening-day record in Japan; Deadline noted it could not independently verify that claim, and it is carried here flagged the same way. The final Japan forecast is more than ¥10 billion, roughly $63.2 million.

The Competition

The challenger field is unusual. Ramayana: Rise of a Legend, Nitesh Tiwari's two-part epic — reported budget $420–500 million, India's most expensive film ever — carries worldwide forecasts ranging wildly, from $30 million to more than $75 million; Sony expects about $6 million over four days in North America from 1,300 locations, the widest North American release ever for an Indian film. And Warner Bros.' The Cat in the Hat, the weekend's nominal family tentpole, is tracking soft — the subject of its own story on this page.

Review scores, for what they are worth on a Thursday: Godzilla Minus Zero at 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Ramayana at 40 percent — on only 10 reviews, a sample too small to settle anything.

What the tracking describes, if it holds, is a weekend won by a subtitled sequel from a 71-year-old franchise over a Dr. Seuss adaptation and the most expensive film India has ever made. The forecasts have been wrong before. They will be graded on Sunday.

The Minus One inheritance is the sequel's commercial engine. The 2023 film became a word-of-mouth phenomenon in North America and won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects on a budget reported at a fraction of a Hollywood tentpole's; its sequel arrives with that reputation converted into opening-weekend demand, IMAX screens — all of which Deadline's preview says it has — and a Japanese opening that more than tripled its predecessor's first day. A 201 percent increase on day one, if it sustains proportionally, points to a Japan total that could challenge the ¥10 billion forecast from below the line rather than above it.

The spread in the Ramayana forecasts tells its own story about the limits of tracking for diaspora-driven releases: a $45 million gap between respectable estimates for the same film in the same weekend. North American tracking models have historically under- and over-shot Indian tentpoles in both directions, which is why Sony's own expectation — about $6 million over four days — is the most conservative number attached to the film. Between a Japanese sequel, an Indian epic and a soft-tracking Seuss, Sunday's chart will be a report card on the forecasters as much as the films.

Sources: Deadline preview reporting via Business Today and Cup of Soul (forecasts, Japan figures, Toho claim flagged unverified by Deadline itself); ScreenStat (review scores).