Godzilla Minus Zero Box Office Smashes Historic 22-Year Record

Published Nov 7, 2026, 11:20 AM EST

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

Godzilla Minus Zero has used its atomic breath to incinerate an all-time record.

The new movie, which debuted in domestic theaters on November 6 after premiering at the New York Film Festival on September 26, is the 34th Japanese-language installment in the long-running kaiju franchise. 2026's Godzilla Minus Zero is a direct sequel to the 2023 smash hit Godzilla Minus One, which grossed $116 million against a reported $10 million budget and won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Takashi Yamazaki has returned as writer, director, and VFX lead, and returning actors Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe are also back as married couple Kōichi and Noriko Shikishima.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Godzilla Minus Zero is projected to earn a 3-day total of $32 million at the domestic box office by the end of its opening weekend. This is by far the best opening weekend in history for a live-action foreign language movie, beating the all-time record that was set 22 years ago by the 2002 Mandarin-language Jet Li movie Hero, which earned $17.8 million when it debuted Stateside in 2004.

Adjusted for inflation, Hero's opening weekend is roughly $31.6 million, so if these numbers hold, Godzilla Minus Zero should earn the record on the inflation-adjusted chart as well. The second highest-grossing domestic debut went to Godzilla Minus One, which earned a considerably lower 3-day gross of $11.4 million.

Naturally, Minus Zero has had the best domestic debut for any Japanese-language movie in the Godzilla franchise, as well, though it cannot compare to majority of the English-language installments (though it is within $0.2 million of beating the debut of 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong). Below, see how it compares with the rest of the movies in the franchise that received major domestic debuts:

Title	Country	Domestic Debut	Worldwide Box Office
Godzilla 1985 (1985)	Japan	$509,502	$4.1 million
Godzilla (1998)	U.S.A.	$44 million	$376 million
Godzilla 2000 (2000)	Japan	$4.4 million	$10 million
Godzilla (2014)	U.S.A.	$93.2 million	$529.1 million
Shin Godzilla (2016)	Japan	$451,293	$79.6 million
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)	U.S.A.	$47.8 million	$387.3 million
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)	U.S.A.	$32.2 million	$470.1 million
Godzilla Minus One (2023)	Japan	$11.4 million	$105.2 million
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)	U.S.A.	$80 million	$572.5 million

If Godzilla Minus Zero has a similar trajectory to Godzilla Minus One, this head start could lead it to earn more than $275 million worldwide, with roughly $150 million of that total coming from the domestic box office. Should it be able to pass the $150 million domestic milestone, it will be the first live-action foreign language movie to ever do so. At the time of writing, only one live-action foreign language movie has even earned more than $60 million.

That would be Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which earned $128.1 million in domestic theaters by the end of its run. It didn't break the domestic debut record because it opened in limited theaters with $663,205, but it was well served by a slow expansion that saw it earning more money than the previous weekend nine non-consecutive times.

Scratch & Peek

Identify the cover art while scratching off as little foil as possible.

While it remains to be seen if the new movie has the same momentum as the previous installment, Godzilla Minus Zero reviews have been glowing. It has earned a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 90% from critics and a Verified Hot score of 96% from audiences, as well as a CinemaScore of A. Minus One fared slightly better with 99%, 98%, and A, but these strong notices could mean that the sequel will build a similar level of word of mouth.

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  Ryunosuke Kamiki

  Koichi Shikishima

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  Minami Hamabe

  Noriko Oishi

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  Min Tanaka

  Kanji Murakami

• Hidetaka Yoshioka

  Kenji Noda