MONSTERS' BRAWL

WITH THE TWO ICONIC BEASTS GOING TOE-TO-TOE IN THE ULTIMATE MONSTER MOVIE, GODZILLA VS. KONG MIGHT JUST BE THE CATHARTIC CLASH WE NEED RIGHT NOW. TOTAL FILM REPORTS FROM THE SET TO FIND OUT HOW THE MONSTERVERSE EPIC IS AIMING TO APPEAL TO THE KID IN US ALL.

- MATT MAYTUM

When Total Film catches up with Godzilla Vs. Kong director Adam Wingard in February 2021, his long-awaited crossover grudge-match movie is “100 per cent done”. All he has left to do is sign off IMAX and Dolby Vision 3D versions.

This film has been a long time coming, and not just because it’s the culmination of a MonsterVerse arc that began with 2014’s Godzilla reboot, and continued through 2017’s Kong: Skull Island and 2019’s Godzilla sequel, King Of The Monsters. After a couple of release-date postponements, Godzilla Vs. Kong is almost upon us, with a US release in March, where it’ll land on cinema screens as well as streaming for HBO Max subscribers.

For Wingard, this post-production phase hasn’t been too badly disrupted by the pandemic that’s obliterated cinema schedules. “We had our first test screening at the end of February [2020] that went really great,” he recalls. “So it was good that we got a test screening in before the pandemic hit, because it really gave us the confidence of: ‘OK, everything’s landing.’ Even though the test screening didn’t have all the finished VFX and stuff, the fact it went really well and was positive, it really gave us a lot of energy to push through to the end.”