Italian film director/writer/distributor Luigi Cozzi used this piece of promotional art for his re-release of the original Godzilla in Italy.

Godzilla is a kaiju (Japanese giant monster), first appearing in Ishir? Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films. He is commonly referred to as the King of the Monsters. With the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon 5 incident still fresh in the Japanese consciousness, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons.

As the film series expanded, some stories took on less serious undertones portraying Godzilla as a hero while other plots still portrayed Godzilla as a destructive monster; sometimes the lesser of two threats who plays the defender by default but is still a danger to humanity. Inspired by the fictional Rhedosaurus created by animator Ray Harryhausen for the film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla's iconic character design was conceived as that of an amphibious reptilian monster based around the loose concept of a dinosaur with an erect standing posture, scaly skin, an anthropomorphic torso with muscular arms, spikes on its back and tail, and a furrowed brow.

In 1976, Italian director Luigi Cozzi intended to re-release Godzilla in Italy. Facing resistance from exhibitors to showing a black and white film, Cozzi instead licensed a negative of Godzilla, King of the Monsters from Toho and created a new movie in color, adding newsreel footage from World War II, which he released as Godzilla in 1977. The film was colorized using Cozzi's own technique, and may have been one of the first black and white movies to be colorized. Dialogue was dubbed into Italian and new music was added. After the initial Italian run, the negative became Toho property and prints have only been exhibited in Italy. Italian firm Yamato Video at one time intended to release the colorized version on a double DVD along with the original Godzilla.

In 2004, director Yoshimitsu Banno acquired permission from Toho to produce a short IMAX Godzilla film. In 2009, the project was turned over to Legendary Pictures to be redeveloped as a feature film. Announced in March 2010, the film was co-produced with Warner Bros. Pictures and was directed by Gareth Edwards.

Godzilla was theatrically released on May 16, 2014, to positive reviews and was a box office success, grossing $529 million worldwide against a production budget of $160 million. The film's success prompted Toho to produce a reboot of their own and Legendary to proceed with sequels and a shared cinematic franchise dubbed the MonsterVerse, with Godzilla: King of the Monsters released on May 31, 2019, and Godzilla vs. Kong released on March 24, 2021. Legendary's license to Godzilla expired in 2020. However, in January 2022, Legendary announced that Apple TV+ had ordered a live-action MonsterVerse series featuring Godzilla and other Titans. A fifth MonsterVerse film is scheduled to be released on March 15, 2024.

The untitled Godzilla vs. Kong sequel (under the working title Origins) is an upcoming American monster film directed by Adam Wingard. A sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), it will be the fifth film in Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse, the 37th film in the Godzilla franchise, the 13th film in the King Kong franchise, and the fifth Godzilla film to be completely produced by an American film studio. Due to the box office and streaming success of Godzilla vs. Kong during the pandemic, Legendary announced a sequel in March 2022 and that filming would commence later in the year. In May 2022, it was announced that Wingard would return to direct and Dan Stevens cast as the lead. Filming began in July 2022 in Gold Coast, Queensland. The film is scheduled to be released on March 15, 2024.

This latest entry follows up the explosive showdown of Godzilla vs. Kong with an all-new cinematic adventure, pitting the almighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal undiscovered threat hidden within our world, challenging their very existence – and our own. The epic new film will delve further into the histories of these Titans, their origins and the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond, while uncovering the mythic battle that helped forge these extraordinary beings and tied them to humankind forever.

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