Godzilla Minus Zero Tipped to Top US Box Office

Godzilla Minus Zero is heading for the top of the North American box office in its opening weekend, according to trade forecasts published ahead of its United States release on 6 November 2026. Variety’s forecast puts the Japanese-language sequel at about $30 million from 3,254 theatres, comfortably ahead of its nearest new rival.

The film, directed by Takashi Yamazaki for Toho, is the follow-up to Godzilla Minus One, the 2023 hit that won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. It is set two years after that film, as Godzilla regenerates and returns to a post-war Japan facing a new monster threat. Distributor GKIDS is handling the North American release, and the film is booked into every Imax auditorium and premium large-format screen, according to Deadline’s reporting.

If the forecast holds, it would be a landmark result. No Japanese Godzilla film has ever topped the domestic weekend chart, and the projected opening would nearly triple the $11.4 million debut of Godzilla Minus One, which went on to earn $57.1 million in the United States and Canada. Screen Rant’s analysis notes that the sequel could also challenge the record for the biggest domestic debut by a Japanese Godzilla film by a wide margin.

A record start in Japan

The North American forecast follows a record-breaking launch in Japan, where the film opened on 3 November, Godzilla Day. It took $5.7 million, or 910 million yen, on its first day, from more than 590,000 admissions, the biggest opening day ever for a live-action Godzilla film in Japan. A second day of about $1.6 million took its two-day total to roughly $7.3 million.

Deadline, which reported the Japanese figures, said it could not independently verify Toho’s claim of a record, and noted that the first-day total trails the $11.1 million opening day of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle in July 2025. Even so, forecasters expect the film to pass $11 million in Japan over its opening weekend and to finish above 10 billion yen, or about $63.2 million, in its home market.

Worldwide, Deadline projects an opening above $60 million, with North America accounting for $25 million to $30 million of that total. The film opens this weekend in 60 territories on 17,000 screens, including Australia, Brazil, Mexico, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.

The competition: a beloved cat and a western

The main challenger is Warner Bros. Animation’s The Cat in the Hat, starring Bill Hader as the Cat, which is projected at $20 million to $25 million from 4,000 venues. The film, directed by Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja, carries a reported $92 million production budget and has no direct animated competition until Disney’s Hexed opens on 25 November.

Elsewhere, Searchlight’s Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as two CIA officers sent to Easter Island before Chile’s 1973 coup, is projected at $5 million to $7 million. The contrast with Godzilla Minus Zero is striking: the Japanese film’s domestic marketing budget was under $10 million and mostly social media, according to Deadline, yet it is outpacing far more expensive rivals in pre-release tracking.

The result would cap a remarkable run for Japanese cinema in North America. GKIDS’ previous record debut was the $13 million opening of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron in 2023, a mark Godzilla Minus Zero is expected to more than double. It also follows a busy autumn at the box office: the recent Halloween box-office weekend was led by smaller titles, while The Odyssey passed $1.17 billion to become Universal’s biggest international release.

Why the forecast matters

Box-office forecasts are not results, and the final ranking will depend on Friday-to-Sunday ticket sales, walk-up business and word of mouth. A mid-$20 million opening would still be a record for GKIDS, while a $30 million debut would put a subtitled Japanese film at the very top of the American chart, a milestone no previous entry in the 70-year franchise has reached.

For Toho, the stakes go beyond one weekend. Godzilla Minus One proved that a relatively low-budget Japanese production could break out globally; Minus Zero, filmed for Imax and released far more widely, is the test of whether that success can be repeated at a much larger scale. Audiences in the United States will deliver their verdict from Friday.