Godzilla Minus Zero opened to 31.6 million dollars in North America, the biggest opening ever for a live action foreign language film, and the record comes with an asterisk. The film beat every live action foreign language opening in history, but the overall foreign language crown belongs to an animated film, and the gap between the two says something about what American audiences will watch.
Why it matters
The record for biggest foreign language opening in general is held by Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, the Japanese animated movie that grossed 70.6 million dollars in its 2025 debut in the United States. Godzilla took less than half of that, and the comparison is the measure of how far a live action film still has to go to match the animated audience.
The older record is the one Godzilla actually broke. Hero, the Chinese martial arts film, opened with about 17.8 million dollars in 2004, and that mark stood for 22 years. Godzilla nearly doubled it, and the only live action film to open bigger is The Passion of the Christ, which took 83.8 million dollars in 2004 despite dialogue that was largely in Aramaic, a caveat every list carries.
What happens next
The numbers say the audience has changed. A Japanese language film, distributed in the United States by GKIDS, a subsidiary of Toho, has just beaten every English language release in the country, and it did so in Japanese with English subtitles. The previous record for a live action foreign language opening had stood since Hero in 2004, and the only foreign language film to open bigger in North America is the animated Demon Slayer.
What happens next will be decided by the second weekend, and by whether the record holds when the final figures arrive. Variety has already reported final figures slightly lower, at 30.5 million dollars, which still breaks the old record by a wide margin. For Toho, the crown that matters is the live action one, and it is theirs. For the industry, the crown that matters is the animated one, and it is still out of reach.
