Godzilla Minus Zero Box Office: $30.6M Opening Tops Chart — Toho's Subtitled Kaiju Sequel Nearly Triples Minus One and Beats The Cat in the Hat
Toho's Japanese-language sequel opened to nearly three times what Godzilla Minus One made in 2023, and out-grossed Warner Bros.' family release by more than $10 million.
Godzilla Minus Zero took the No. 1 spot at the North American box office in its first weekend, grossing $30,587,672 from 3,254 theaters, according to The Numbers' weekend chart for November 6–8, 2026. That works out to a per-theater average of about $9,400, the highest among the weekend's top ten, and it came with an A CinemaScore from opening-night audiences, as reported by TheWrap.
The result is a big step up from the first film. Godzilla Minus One opened to $11.4 million in December 2023 and finished with $57.4 million domestically, per TheWrap. Takashi Yamazaki's sequel, set in 1949 Japan with Minami Hamabe and Ryunosuke Kamiki returning, has now opened to nearly triple that figure.
It beat the weekend's other big opener
The sequel's main rival was Warner Bros.' The Cat in the Hat, which opened in 4,003 theaters, the widest release of the weekend, and grossed $20,002,705 for a $4,997 average. That is a solid start and slightly above the roughly $18 million that TheWrap had said it was tracking toward on Saturday, but Godzilla finished more than $10 million ahead with about 750 fewer screens. The Cat in the Hat also earned an A CinemaScore, though our own Metacritic-based coverage of the film shows critics were far less warm, at 47.
A rare foreign-language No. 1
TheWrap notes that Godzilla Minus Zero is only the fourth non-English-language film to reach No. 1 at the U.S. box office, joining The Passion of the Christ, Hero and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle. The film opened on Friday with $14.7 million, which included Thursday previews, and then held its Saturday and Sunday business well enough to push the three-day total past $30 million.
The rest of the top five
Drummer Boy opened third with $9.4 million from 2,850 theaters, and the Indian epic Ramayana: Rise of a Legend took fourth with $8.9 million over the weekend from only 1,433 theaters, for $12.4 million across four days. The holdover You Can See Everything, which has now grossed $79.4 million in 24 days, was fifth with $8.4 million, down 26%. Further down, Wild Horse Nine opened eighth with $5.9 million from just 1,100 theaters, a $5,369 average.
The 67 films reporting grossed $115.9 million combined for the weekend. For a month that also has the new Hunger Games film, Disney's Hexed and Godzilla's own second-weekend drop still to come, a $30 million kaiju opening for a subtitled film is a strong signal that audiences will turn out for a well-reviewed, spectacle-driven release.
If you want to know whether the movie lives up to the numbers, read our full review of Godzilla Minus Zero, and watch the official trailer below. The film is playing now in theaters.
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