Godzilla Minus Zero has settled at $30,587,672 for its North American opening weekend, according to the final figures on Box Office Mojo — about $1 million below the $31.61 million studio estimate carried in Sunday’s reporting and in yesterday’s post. The final number changes nothing about the history made: this is still the biggest opening ever for a live-action foreign-language film in North America, and the first time a Japanese Godzilla film has topped a North American weekend.
The film opened in 3,254 theatres with a per-theatre average of $9,400, the best in the top ten by a wide margin, according to Box Office Mojo. It took $14.5 million on Friday, including Thursday previews, according to Hypebeast’s Friday report — a figure that sits a touch below the $14.6 million carried in yesterday’s draft, a reminder that weekend estimates always move a little when the final counts arrive on Monday.
The record stands on the final number
The $30.59 million final is nearly triple the $11.4 million domestic debut of its predecessor, Minus One, in December 2023, which went on to take $57.1 million in North America and win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. With a reported budget of less than $20 million, according to BusinessWorld, Minus Zero is on course to pass its predecessor’s entire domestic total within its first two weekends.
The film is the first foreign-language film to reach number one in the United States since the Chainsaw Man movie, and the biggest opening ever for distributor GKIDS, whose previous biggest grosser was The Boy and the Heron at $47.3 million. Critics have given it 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and audiences an A CinemaScore, according to BusinessWorld — the kind of scores that point to a long run rather than a front-loaded opening.
A $63 million global weekend
Worldwide, the film’s opening weekend stands at around $63 million, with Japan contributing about $17 million over the weekend, according to BusinessWorld. It opened in Japan on November 3, Godzilla Day, with around $5.7 million on day one, and its Japanese running total has since passed $11.8 million, according to Deadline’s weekend reporting cited yesterday.
Premium screens did the heavy lifting: IMAX alone delivered $21.3 million worldwide, or 34 percent of the global opening, according to IMAX’s own announcement — a story covered in full in today’s companion post. An India release is still to come on November 20. Confirmed studio actuals are now in, the estimate is settled, and the monster has made history on either number.
