Godzilla Minus Zero breaks Box Office Record
You Can See Everything is also causing a sensation
A strong start for "Godzilla Minus Zero": The Japanese monster blockbuster has broken a record at the North American box office. According to Variety, it grossed $31.6 million on opening weekend. With this, "Godzilla Minus Zero" not only jumped to No. 1 on the current box office charts but also achieved the most successful opening for a foreign live-action film in a non-English language in North America.
If we expand the scope beyond live-action films, the Japanese animated film "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle" still holds the top spot: The film opened in 2025 with $70.6 million. The previous live-action record holder was the 2002 Chinese martial arts film "Hero." At the time, "Hero" opened with $17.8 million, a figure that has now been significantly surpassed by "Godzilla Minus Zero." Worldwide, the Japanese blockbuster has already grossed $63 million.
Godzilla Minus Zero: A hit with critics
"Godzilla Minus Zero" is the sequel to "Godzilla Minus One," which was released in 2023 and won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. The plot of this monster sequel is set in 1949, two years after the events of the previous film, and picks up where the Godzilla story left off, as the synopsis explains:
"Two years have passed since then, and the country has faced agonizing struggles to achieve recovery and finally reclaim its daily life. Just as humanity managed to cling to a hard-won peace, a new threat strikes, crushing hope in an instant."
In addition to its successful theatrical release, "Godzilla Minus Zero" has also received positive reviews. On Metacritic, the film currently has a score of 74 (out of 100), a rating based on 44 mostly positive reviews. Takashi Yamazaki directed and wrote the screenplay for "Godzilla Minus Zero." The cast includes Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Min Tanaka, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Masami Nagasawa, Yuki Yamada, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Jun Kunimura, Sakura Ando, and Miou Tanaka.
Successful documentary: You Can See Everything
As for the rest of the North American box office charts, "The Cat in the Hat" secured the No. 2 spot behind "Godzilla Minus Zero." The animated film grossed $20.5 million. In third place is the historical drama "Drummer Boy" with $9.3 million. The documentary "You Can See Everything" is in fourth place with $8.8 million, and rounding out the current top five is the Indian epic "Ramayana: Rise of a Legend" with $8.65 million.
"You Can See Everything" is particularly noteworthy. After about three weeks in North American theaters, the film by directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim has grossed a total of about $80 million. This is quite an achievement for a documentary: Aside from music documentaries, only the documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) has grossed more at the North American box office (119 million).
"Journey into the abyss"
"You Can See Everything" centers on Elizabeth Holmes. At just 19 years old, she founded the blood-testing startup Theranos in 2003. It all seemed to be shaping up to be a success story, but years later came the steep fall. Theranos was supposed to revolutionize blood testing, but the company was found to have falsified data. In 2022, Holmes was convicted of fraud, and in 2023, she began serving her prison sentence.
And that's where the documentary comes in. Thirty-four days before she was due to begin her sentence, Holmes invited a film crew to document her every move. The official synopsis for the film reads: "What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss." Check out the trailer to get a first glimpse of "You Can See Everything":
