Godzilla Minus Zero (2026)
About
Takashi Yamazaki's sequel to Godzilla Minus One (2023) sets Godzilla against King Ghidorah in a Japan still rebuilding after the war.
Plot
It is 1949, two years after Godzilla was sunk in Sagami Bay. Former kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima has married Noriko, who survived the Ginza attack but is slowly changing as Godzilla's cells take hold in her body. With their neighbour Sumiko, who now runs an orphanage, they are raising their adopted daughter Akiko. Kenji Noda heads a new disaster response bureau and has gathered the old crew, including Mizushima, Captain Akitsu and destroyer captain Hotta, to be ready for whatever comes next.
What comes next falls out of the sky. A meteorite carries a gelatinous organism that feeds on wildlife around Matsumoto and grows into a flying, lightning-spitting dragon. The scientist Kanji Murakami, a survivor of Hiroshima, names it Ghidorah. A bombing raid led by Kōichi only makes it stronger: struck by lightning, it revives as a three-headed, twin-tailed King Ghidorah that can lift whole buildings with a gravity beam.
As Ghidorah tears through the country, a regenerated Godzilla surfaces near Kōzu-shima. Murakami believes the only answer is to set the two monsters on each other, and he has built a device that can steer Godzilla, but only with Noriko's help, because of the cells she shares with it. He also has a darker plan of his own, to turn Godzilla on New York in revenge for his family.
Ending explained
The final battle is staged in the ruins of Ginza. Kōichi flies Murakami's seaplane, with Noriko and the amplifier on board, to draw Godzilla in, while the bureau sets a trap to freeze Ghidorah with liquid nitrogen and then ignite it. When the fuel lines are cut, Noda sets the trap off by hand and is killed when Kōichi fires the rocket that lights it. Aoyama tells Kōichi that Ghidorah killed Noda, to spare him the guilt.
Kōichi and Noriko use the amplifier to bring a buried Godzilla back to life, and Godzilla finishes Ghidorah when the dragon loses control of the heat ray it has absorbed. The American military then turns on Godzilla, but is ordered to stop because it wants him kept alive as a possible weapon, and he swims away. Murakami burns his research before he is arrested. Realising that the Americans could use Noriko's cells in the same way, Kōichi and Noriko go into hiding, and in the last scene they decide to take Akiko with them rather than leave her behind.
Cast and characters
Most of the Minus One cast return in their original roles, joined by Min Tanaka as the scientist Murakami, Masami Nagasawa as the meteorologist Aoyama and Jun Kunimura as the medical officer Dr. Ogata. Shin Godzilla director Hideaki Anno has a cameo as a train passenger, and Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who directed Kong: Skull Island, appears as an American soldier.
Production
Toho confirmed a new Yamazaki Godzilla film in November 2024, and the title was revealed on Godzilla Day, November 3, 2025. Shooting ran from August to December 2025, entirely in Japan, and it was the first Japanese film shot for IMAX. Yamazaki has said the budget was around 30% higher than that of Minus One, which cost under $15 million. Shirogumi, the studio behind the Oscar-winning effects on Minus One, handled the visual effects again.
Details
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Writer/Screenplay: Takashi Yamazaki
Producer: Kazuaki Kishida, Gō Abe, Keiichirō Moriya
Running time: 135 minutes
Certificate: 15 (UK), R (US)
Budget: $13–18 million
Box office: About $64 million worldwide (as of November 10, 2026)
Genre: Kaiju, Action, Drama
Released: September 26, 2026 (New York Film Festival); November 3, 2026 (Japan and UK); November 6, 2026 (US and Canada)
Music Composer: Naoki Satō
Cast
- Ryunosuke Kamiki as Kōichi Shikishima
- Minami Hamabe as Noriko Shikishima
- Min Tanaka as Kanji Murakami
- Hidetaka Yoshioka as Kenji Noda
- Masami Nagasawa as Makoto Aoyama
- Yuki Yamada as Shirō Mizushima
- Kuranosuke Sasaki as Seiji Akitsu
- Jun Kunimura as Dr. Ogata
- Sakura Ando as Sumiko Ōta
- Miou Tanaka as Tatsuo Hotta
- Sae Nagatani as Akiko
- Kou Maehara as Akira Hagiwara
- Kenji Mizuhashi as Kunio Tsuruno
- Wes Wing as Major Harlan Gilbert
Franchise
Godzilla (2014), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Related
Trivia
- It is the first Godzilla film to be rated R in the United States, for "some violent content/bloody images".
- Its opening day in Japan, about ¥910 million from more than 590,000 admissions, was the biggest for any live-action film in Japanese history, roughly double the first day of Minus One.
- In the US and Canada it set the record for the biggest opening weekend by a foreign-language live-action film, and worldwide it had the biggest IMAX opening for a Japanese film.
- The North American release came three days after Japan, on November 6, through Toho's own distributor GKIDS. Some IMAX screens in the US, UK and Mexico showed it early on November 3, Godzilla Day.
- Yamazaki has admitted that while promoting Minus One he claimed there were no sequel talks, when in fact he had already handed Toho a five-page outline.
Critical Reception
Critics largely loved it, though they split on whether it beats Minus One. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 90% from 188 reviews, with an average of 7.9 out of 10, and Metacritic scores it 74 out of 100, "generally favorable". Most praised the bigger scale and the effects, and the way Yamazaki keeps the human story as gripping as the monster fights, while the doubters found the story less tightly built than its predecessor's and the final act harder to believe. Audiences were even warmer: an "A" CinemaScore, the same as Minus One, and 96% on Rotten Tomatoes' verified audience score.
Reviews
- The Hollywood Reporter (David Rooney): positive, "every bit as exciting as its predecessor".
- The Guardian (Jesse Hassenger): positive.
- Total Film (Molly Edwards): positive, among the best films of the year.
- TheWrap (William Bibbiani): mixed, a strong sequel but not one of the franchise's best.
- Inverse (Kate Rife): mixed, a worthy spectacle with a looser human story.
