‘Godzilla’ slated to terrorize weekend box office competition

According to estimates, the latest ‘Godzilla’ film is on track to earn $70 million in the weekend’s box office.

Hoping to erase the bad taste that Sony’s disappointing 1998 big-budget remake of the Japanese monster movie classic left in our mouths, Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ ‘Godzilla’ is slated to premiere this weekend. The film is currently on track to gross an impressive $70 million domestically through Sunday.

‘Godzilla,’ which co-stars Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ken Watanabe, follows a variety of humans as they fight for their lives against a horrifying mega-lizard, one who has a few monsters to take down himself. Initial reaction to the new reboot, which was directed by Gareth Edwards and budgeted at $160 million, has been extremely positive. The film has a strong 77% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good sign considering the vast audience criticism of the 1998 ‘Godzilla’ and the resulting need of this film to generate buzz from positive word-of-mouth.

So far, reviews from critics have also been mostly positive, with the Huffington Post writing:

“The latest iteration of the 60-year-old franchise is in capable hands. Edwards’ ‘Godzilla’ is a pleasingly paced 3-D spectacle that pays chilling homage to the artful legacy of the original 1954 film—Ishiro Honda’s Gojira—while emerging as its own prodigious monster movie.”

The film ‘Godzilla’ also benefits from a lack of major competition, as the only other big release this weekend is Disney’s sports drama ‘Million Dollar Arm,’ a $25 million-budgeted film. It should have no problem taking down last weekend’s top two films, Universal’s R-rated hit comedy ‘Neighbors’, which has been out since May 9, and Sony’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2,’ which has been out for several weeks.