Things We Want To See From The New Godzilla Show On Apple TV+
Godzilla fans around the world breathed a radioactive beam of joy when it was announced the MonsterVerse would continue. But despite being the world's "biggest" movie star (easy joke, we know), Godzilla's further adventures won't take place on the big screen, but on the small. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the future stompings of Godzilla and the Titans will take place on streaming service Apple TV+. Despite the four films in the MonsterVerse earning $580 million domestically and $1.9 billion worldwide on a combined $670 million budget, the MonsterVerse movie studio Legendary believed it belonged on TV. The content-hungry Apple TV+ streaming service was all too happy to oblige.
Now the big question: What can we look forward to seeing? There is nearly 70 years of backstory for the showrunners to draw from, as well as plenty of projects that never happened for one reason or another. What does the future have in store from Japan's biggest pop cultural export? Here are the things we want to see from the new Godzilla show on Apple TV+.
The big-screen beginnings of the MonsterVerse
How did we get to the point that Apple TV+ wanted a Godzilla series? "Godzilla" kicked off the franchise before it was even a franchise in 2014, opening to $93 million and ultimately drawing $524 million worldwide. In 2015, Legendary announced a pivot after acquiring the rights to King Kong, King Ghidorah, and other classic kaiju, and developed plans for a shared cinematic universe.
"Kong: Skull Island" was released in 2017, but set in 1973, and continued the series' winning ways with $168 million domestically and $566 million worldwide, a franchise high. However, "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" was a victim of the dreaded summer of 2019. Releasing a sequel after five years (the sweet spot is 2-4 years) didn't help matters. The result was a franchise-low $386 million worldwide, which might have killed the series if "Godzilla vs. Kong" wasn't already in production. Good thing it was. The colossal cinematic clash overcame COVID-19 closures and a simultaneous release on HBO Max to earn $468 million worldwide, putting it in the top 10 for 2021.
Everything we know about the show
While it seems tough to hide a 394-foot radioactive reptile, we don't know much about the Apple TV+ Godzilla series. According to Murphy's Multiverse, the series (under working title "Hourglass") takes place after the 2014 film with "the shocking new reality that monsters are real," and follows a family that's linked to the secret monster-hunting organization Monarch. Chris Black, the sci-fi veteran behind "Star Trek Enterprise," will serve as showrunner. Black also worked on "Desperate Housewives," so maybe we'll finally get the long-awaited Godzilla vs. Eva Longoria. Black's partner and series co-creator is Matt Fraction, who wrote award-winning comic books, including a run on "Hawkeye." If you liked the "Hawkeye" show on Disney+, it drew heavily from Fraction's work. So the team running things knows their stuff.
Meanwhile, Apple TV+ has been on a run with quality content, including "Foundation," based on Isaac Asimov's famous novel series, as well as "See," a post-apocalyptic thriller which featuring Jason Mamoa and Dave Bautista. It's a little surprising that the show landed on Apple TV+, as the MonsterVerse's home has been HBO Max (including a simultaneous streaming release for "Godzilla vs. Kong"). Meanwhile, the Toho-produced animes "Godzilla: Monster Planet" and "Godzilla Singular Point" streamed on Netflix, also the home of the upcoming "Kong: Skull Island" anime series. Not that we're complaining — with Apple's commitment to quality, Godzilla could be almost as big as "Ted Lasso."
More Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Graham
If you're reading this article, you've probably already seen the MonsterVerse films. But just in case you haven't, spoilers ahead.
Both Ken Watanabe's Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and Sally Hawkins' Dr. Vivienne Graham were killed in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters." Dr. Serizawa was killed after giving Godzilla a shot of performance-enhancing atomic bomb, and Dr. Graham after getting curb stomped by Ghidorah in Antarctica. Well, we want them both back.
No, we're not suggesting this series pulls a "Dallas" and says it was all a dream. The show is supposed to take place just after Godzilla's titanic rumble with the MUTOs leveled San Francisco in 2014, when Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Graham were still alive. Next to Cranston's Dr. Joe Brody, these two were the series' most interesting unexplored characters, victims of the movies' massive casts. We'd like to see them back, investigating monster mayhem around the globe, a la Mulder and Scully in "The X-Files" or Dr. Kristen Bouchard and Mike Colter in "Evil." Given both Watanabe and Hawkins are Academy Award-nominated actors, they'd definitely lend the series some credibility.
Skull Island adventures
"Kong: Skull Island" takes place in 1973, while "Godzilla vs. Kong" is set in 2024. Clearly, a lot went down in the 51 years separating the storylines in each film. In "Kong: Skull Island," the government agency Monarch has just discovered Skull Island for the first time. In "Godzilla vs. Kong," the island has been rendered uninhabitable by an advancing tropical storm, and has been converted into Kong's giant personal playpen. We'd like to know what happened — and not just as a quick throwaway exposition dialogue, either.
More specifically, we want to see what happens. How and when did Monarch take over Skull Island? What happened with the indigenous Iwi tribe? What's their backstory — they've been on Skull Island for centuries — and what does their mythology tell about the Titans? And finally, we'd definitely like to see an appearance from the big ape himself.
Go back in time
"In 1954, we awakened something," Ken Watanabe's Dr. Serizawa tells Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Ford Brody, sending chills down the audiences' spine. And thus, Monarch was born. The organization was formed to track and study the Titans, and managed to keep them a secret for 60 years. We want to know how. We got some inklings from John Goodman's William Randa in "Kong: Skull Island," but it was mostly just cryptic world-building about how monsters are real. We'd love to see more of the backstory on how the organization came to be.
Take us back to 1954 to the South Pacific, when the U.S. government was dropping hydrogen bombs on islands under the guise of testing, but really in the hopes of killing Godzilla. Show us the years between 1954 and 1973, when Monarch was just getting started, maybe showing the first members living in isolated communities. And let's see the years between "Kong: Skull Island" and "Godzilla," before Monarch was exposed to the world. Given that the show is supposedly about one family's ties to the secret organization, we're definitely excited to see more of Monarch.
Mythology of Mothra, Ghidorah and Rodan
As far as post-credits scenes go, the one to "Kong: Skull Island" was pretty great. Tom Hiddleston's Captain James Conrad and Brie Larson's Mason Weaver were being held in a secret location after surviving (barely) their Skull Island adventures. Corey Hawkins as Joe Brooks (played by Joe Morton in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters") bursts in to tell them: "Kong isn't the only king." At which point he shows them a series of ancient cave paintings of Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah. Cue goosebumps.
However, despite that setup, 2019's "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" didn't really spend much time on the backstories for Godzilla's most famous foes. Assuming they have the rights from Toho, this Apple TV+ show should fix that. Zhang Ziyi, playing twins Dr. Ilene Chen and Dr. Ling, calls Mothra "Queen of the Monsters" after she hatches from her cocoon. Why's that? We know from the original Toho series that Mothra is basically a butterfly goddess whose purpose is to protect the people of Faro Island. Is she the same here? What about Rodan? All the movie tells us about him is he lives in a volcano (rent must be cheap). And finally, Ghidorah. Dr. Chen discovers Ghidorah is an alien whose coming was foretold by ancient texts. That's kind of a big deal, but was given all of 25 seconds in the film. Put bluntly, we need more Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah.
Construction of MechaGodzilla
Many mega-billionaires spend their fortune buying islands or even blasting off to outer space. Not Demián Bichir's Walter Simmons. The megalomaniacal CEO of Apex Industries in "Godzilla vs. Kong" spent his wealth creating a giant robot version of Godzilla to take out the Titans, MechaGodzilla. (And you thought Musk and Bezos were bizarre.) Simmons and company managed to keep MechaGodzilla a secret, constructing Godzilla's sinister, colossal cyber clone in an underground Hong Kong facility, until the robot did what robots always do and went bonkers.
What we want to see in this story is the construction of MechaGodzilla. The robot just showed up as the big bad at the end of "Godzilla vs. Kong," presumably to give Godzilla and Kong something to bond over, so there's a lot of backstory to explore. We'd love to see how Simmons came to the conclusion that this was the best way to take out the Titans. Also, how did he manage to convince his Board of Directors this was a good use of company funds? Or did he somehow manage to keep what had to be a multi-billion dollar investment secret? Guess nobody checked the marketing budget for a decade. Finally, we'd like to see how he lured Dr. Serizawa's son, Ren, to become MechaGodzilla's telepathic pilot, a subplot that was left on the cutting room floor.
Hollow Earth adventures
Humanity made its first holiday to the Hollow Earth, the birthplace of the Titans, in "Godzilla vs. Kong." And it was pretty sweet — like "Mysterious Island" meets "Legend" by way of Pink Floyd. While this was humanity's first trek to the Hollow Earth, it wasn't the first attempt. We learned that the brother of Alexander Skarsgård's character, Dr. Nathan Lind, was killed in an earlier expedition to Hollow Earth thanks to its reverse-gravitational effect. Such an exploration would make for an interesting subplot.
While they're at it, the series could also show how theorists started to surmise that not only did the Hollow Earth exist, but was the birthplace of the Titans. While human beings never made it to the Hollow Earth before "Godzilla vs. Kong," the Titans obviously did. Let's just skip the boring human drama and stick to what people really want to see: the monsters. Director Adam Wingard would be down, telling Deadline: "The clear starting point we teed up, exploring Hollow Earth, I think there is a lot more to do there ... We tee up some mystery in this film, things I want to see resolved and explored and pushed to the next level."
Draw inspiration from the comics
While we only have a vague idea of what happens between the MonsterVerse movies from the movies themselves, there's a wealth of information and material from the prequel comic books. These are also a goldmine for potential storylines for the Apple TV+ series.
The prequel comic "Godzilla: Awakening" takes place decades before the events of the 2014 film, and tells the story of Eiji Serizawa, father of future Monarch head honcho, Dr. Ishiro Serizawa. We learn that Monarch was a Japanese-American military unit founded by General Douglas McArthur to kill the monsters. Also, Godzilla fights a giant parasite named Shinomura. In "Godzilla: Aftershock," set before "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," we discover an earlier version of the Gojira species named Dagon, that was killed by a MUTO. Godzilla faces off with MUTO Prime, the adult female of the MUTO species. Finally, "Godzilla Dominion," which is set before "Godzilla vs. Kong," is told entirely from Godzilla's point of view, and shows how hard it is sitting on the throne as the King of the Monsters.
We don't know if the series will draw on these comic books, or even if they're still canonical, as Legendary may pull a Lucasfilm and erase them from canon. We certainly hope not.
Give us classic Toho kaiju
Godzilla has one of the greatest rogues' galleries in popular fiction, so we definitely want to see more of the classic Toho monsters. We've already seen Godzilla take on series stalwarts Rodan, Mothra, Ghidorah, and MechaGodzilla, as well as his long-awaited rematch with King Kong, so what's left? A lot.
So where to begin? We use the term loosely, but given the MonsterVerse's "realistic" take (at least as far as Godzilla movies go), we wouldn't be surprised to see more of Toho's "tooth-and-claw" monsters. Like Baragon, the tunnel-dwelling, fire-breathing dinosaur who took on Frankenstein (don't ask). Or Kamakaris, the giant praying mantis, and Kumonga, the titanic tarantula. And of course Anguirus, Godzilla's foe turned friend, basically a giant ankylosaurus with the loyalty of a golden retriever.
Of course, there are Godzilla's more outlandish foes too. Gigan, the bird-beaked space assassin with claws for arms and a buzzsaw in his belly. SpaceGodzilla, the Big G's crystalline clone from some far off cosmic wasteland. And who could forget Hedorah, the Smog Monster, a 200-foot tall walking pile of space sludge? We could go on, but suffice it to say, the series has a ton of source material from the original Toho films.
Bring on the Titans
While Toho has plenty of monsters for the Apple TV+ series to draw from, Legendary may not want to pay for the licensing fees when they could just come up with their own monsters. We learned in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" that the secret organization Monarch was aware of 17 Titans hibernating around the Earth. That is, until Ghidorah woke them up and sent them on a planet-wide path of destruction, before Godzilla took his crown as King of the Monsters and put them in line.
While the Apple TV+ series is set after the events of 2014's "Godzilla," these Titans don't show up until "Godzilla: King of the Monsters." However, Legendary could still show how Monarch came to find out about them. There's Behemoth, the half-mastodon, half-gorilla; Methuselah, a monster that disguised himself as a mountain in Munich; Scylla, the six-legged, spider-like Titan with tentacles for a mouth; and a whole lot more. As far as kaiju creativity, the Legendary team has given Toho a run for their money, so whether it's these Titans or new ones, we'd love to see more monsters.
Lots of Godzilla
This may seem obvious, but it needs to be said: The Apple TV+ series needs Godzilla. Lots of him. We're not saying every episode needs to be Godzilla from start to finish, though we would totally watch that. Nor does it need to be like the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the late 1970s, with Godzilla taking on a "monster of the week" (and please, please no Godzooky). We'd be totally okay if this series did a slow burn, only showing Godzilla every so many episodes.
Granted, the "slow burn" technique burned audiences out in 2014's "Godzilla" but we think that has as much to do with the film's inexplicable decision to kill Bryan Cranston's Dr. Joe Brody and follow Aaron Taylor-Johnson's one-note tough guy, Ford Brody. But if the show has compelling human characters (admittedly a problem for the MonsterVerse so far), we'd be cool with only sporadic appearances by the Big G. But he needs to be in this show, not just an off-screen character that is referenced now and again. Because if there's one thing we want to see in an Apple TV+ Godzilla show, it's Godzilla.