Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire will stomp into theaters two weeks earlier than expected, Legendary and Warner Bros. announced Tuesday.
The fifth installment in their MonsterVerse series will now open March 29 instead of April 12.
Godzilla x Kong is taking the date previously occupied by Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-Ho‘s Mickey 17, whose release is being delayed due to post-strike production shifts. A new date is expected to be announced soon for the feature. (The shift was not exactly a surprise, as there has not been a trailer for the film yet.)
The latest feature film entry in Warner Bros./Legendary Entertainment‘s MonsterVerse follows the events of Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), where fans got to see the two apex kaijus finally fight for supremacy. A trailer for the film shows Godzilla x Kong delving deeper into the mysteries of the Hollow Earth and the reveal of a Titan menace that will necessitate the alliance of Godzilla and Kong.
Godzilla vs. Kong filmmaker Adam Wingard is back in the director’s chair, and reunites with returning castmembers Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Kaylee Hottle. Dan Stevens joins the franchise as a lead in The New Empire.
The franchise also includes Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). There have also been two television entries in the franchise, the anime series Skull Island (2023) released on Netflix, and the live-action series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023) released on Apple TV+.
Based on Edward Ashton’s novel of the same name, Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo. Bong penned the adapted script based on the book Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton.
The book, published in early 2022, centers on a man known as an expendable on a mission to colonize a distant planet. Each colony features one crew member who takes on the most dangerous jobs on the mission — jobs that will assuredly lead to their deaths. However, their memories are backed up and they are restored to cloned bodies when they die.
