Jan 25, 2021

Watch the trailer for Godzilla vs. Kong, which is getting bigger with animated action

The announcement that Warner Bros.'s whole 2021 slate would come out day-and-date in cinemas and on HBO Max (in the U.S.) dealt a huge blow to the fragile theatrical sector and sent the whole movie industry reeling. So it's appropriate that one of the first films to come out under this arrangement is about big things wrecking stuff.

Judging by its first trailer, Godzilla vs. Kong will deliver on the promise of its title, serving up epic pixel-on-pixel action aplenty. The film is the fourth in Warner Bros.'s Monsterverse franchise, which revolves around the two iconic beasts - but the first to pit them against each other. The trailer confirms that we can expect a lot of high-end character animation. Watch it and read the synopsis below:

“One will fall,” shouts the tagline, although it's worth noting that the two beasts have fought onscreen before and both lived to tell the tale. They first met in Toho's 1962 feature King Kong vs. Godzilla, which employed suitmation - which is not in fact animation, but a technique involving actors in monster suits - and some stop motion. Kong is generally understood to have won that round.

Godzilla vs. Kong is directed by Adam Wingard (Blair Witch, Death Note). The vfx and animation are by MPC (vfx supervisor: Pier Lefebvre), Scanline VFX (vfx supervisors: Bryan Hirota and Dann Tarmy), Weta Digital (vfx supervisor: Kevin Andrew Smith), and Luma Pictures. The production vfx supervisor is John “D.J.” DesJardin.

The film was produced by Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod, Jon Jashni, Thomas Tull, and Brian Rogers, with Jay Ashenfelter, Herbert W. Gains, Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Yoshimitsu Banno, and Kenji Okuhira executive-producing. The screenplay is by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, the story by Terry Rossio and Michael Dougherty & Zach Shields. The cast includes Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Kyle Chandler, and Demián Bichir.

The film will come out in the U.S. on March 26, playing in select theaters and HBO Max, where it will be available for 31 days (at no extra cost to subscribers).