In 2021, Godzilla and King Kong broke pandemic box office records in Godzilla vs Kong. And now, filmmaker Adam Wingard is back to do it all again as the director, co-writer, and executive producer of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

In Godzilla x Kong, Godzilla and Kong must unite to defeat a new world-ending threat known as Skar King. Meanwhile, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) of Monarch leads a team to investigate a bizarre signal emanating from the deepest depths of Hollow Earth. This team consists of her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), Titan Truth podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), and Monarch Titan veterinarian and old friend, Trapper (Dan Stevens).

To get insight into the world of the MonsterVerse and its latest instalment, we sat down with the director and Kaiju-fanatic Wingard.

Dan Stevens as Trapper, Rebecca Hall as Dr. Ilene Andrews and Kaylee Hottle as Jia in ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Credit: Daniel McFadden

“[With Godzilla vs Kong], I felt like, ‘I’m just getting the swing of this thing, and now I’m done. What do I do with all this knowledge?'” he says. “Naturally, I wanted to put it into another movie. I was able to come into this one with a whole new level of confidence and understanding of how to approach it.

“When I signed onto this movie, making these productions take so long, and having that experience, I knew I had to completely pace myself out, because you can only do things so fast when you are dealing with this many special effects.

“With that said, making the last movie certainly informed the way I made this movie. And helped set the stage for it.”

Wingard reveals that his favourite sequences of Godzilla vs Kong were from Kong’s perspective.

“I knew we could really lean more into sequences where the Monsters’ POV is the sole way to tell the story,” he says. “Knowing that worked, let’s lean into that because that’s exactly what I wanted to see since I was a little kid.

“What you know as a kid that some people overthink as an adult, is you know that you don’t always need all this story informing everything. You just want to spend time with the monsters, they don’t need to talk to each other, and nobody needs to explain what they’re thinking to be able to understand what’s going on. That’s exactly what I wanted to really dig into with this movie.

“When you’re making a big monster movie, it’s a given that you’re going to have all these sequences with massive brawls, explosions and buildings destroyed. But the thing that was really exciting to me was getting into the daily life of these monsters and the moments in between the battles.”

Godzilla x Kong was filmed in Queensland, in part due to the services and sound stages available at Village Roadshow Studios and how well Australian film crews operate.

“We literally kinda developed this movie around the idea of shooting it in Queensland again. We knew Queensland has some very specific things you can’t find almost anyway else,” he says of the state’s terrain.

He’s quick to cite rainforests and beaches. “We were able to find all that within an hour and a half or so of Gold Coast itself. That’s what’s so magical and great about Australia, it’s got everything right there, so it all just made perfect sense to us.”

Godzilla has seen many successes since his inception and through many different interpretations. In 2023 and into 2024, Toho’s Godzilla Minus One, directed by Takashi Yamazaki, roared into cinemas to critical worldwide acclaim and broke records.

Director Adam Wingard on the set of ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’. Credit: Daniel McFadden

Wingard met Takashi at the 2024 Oscars.

“When I met him… I was impressed how similar a lot of our influences were, even within the monster movie genres… because you look at Godzilla Minus One and my film, and tonally they are completely different,” he says.

“They are very different takes on Godzilla himself and that’s what’s fun about Godzilla. Over the years, there’s been so many different interpretations, and tones, and styles, and different colour palettes and everything.”

He shared one unexpected inspiration they both bonded over.

“Godzilla’s mannerisms were informed by inspiration from our cats. Specifically in my movie, there’s a moment where Godzilla curls up in the Roman Colosseum to hibernate. That was inspired literally from me looking at my cat and her cat nest, and the way she curled up in it, with her tail kind of hanging off the edge. And I thought, wow, that would look great.”

He laughs and smiles, “Who would have thought that Yamazaki at the same time was drawing the same inspiration. You can kinda see it. Even in the look of his Godzilla’s face, it has very much a cat look to it.”

‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ in Cinemas March 28