The studio was banking on the latest James Bond movie, NO TIME TO DIE, raking in lots of money from China. But nobody is going to the movies in China because of fear of spreading the coronavirus contagion. To try to avoid this loss of revenue, they pushed back the release of Bond’s new movie from April to November 25th. Which puts it in the perfect position to take a bite out of the earnings of GODZILLA VS. KONG. Damn it. That’s one thing GVK did not need.
The problem is the budget. There are more than enough fans to keep the Monsterverse franchise cranking out movies, if those budgets weren’t so ridiculous. As it is, they have to bring in huge returns to be counted as profitable. The last entry in the series, GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, didn’t do much more than break even, once all the tickets were counted and the numbers crunched. If we want to see more movies from Legendary’s Monsterverse, we’re going to need GODZILLA VS. KONG to rake in the cash. This was going to be a challenge already, due to competition at the box office. (Marvel has a new movie coming out in November, too.) Throwing James Bond into the mix just makes it all the harder for the kaiju.
Should they delay the opening of GVK until next year? Or just release it and let the cards (and buildings) fall where they may?