The next installment in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse was released earlier this week on March 29. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a sequel to 2021’s Godzilla Vs. Kong and sees the titular monsters team up to fight a bigger Titan who threatens to destroy the world. The film received mixed responses from critics and seemed to have a good opening weekend.
Director Adam Wingard returned to helm the project after the success of the previous film. Along with other cast members such as Rebecca Hall and Bryan Tyree Henry, deaf actress Kaylee Hottle also reprised her role as Jia. Wingard mentioned how he managed to create a complicated system to give cues to the star as the performance involved many reaction shots for the monsters.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Director Was Initially Afraid Of The Huge Production
Director Adam Wingard had only worked on independent horror film sets before he got the chance to helm the studio film Godzilla Vs. Kong. While handling a big franchise was not new to the filmmaker as he had helmed the controversial Netflix adaptation of the anime Death Note, Wingard mentioned how daunting it felt to walk into the sets of a big studio film.
Speaking to IndieWire on the Filmmaker’s Toolkit podcast, the Blair Witch director mentioned how it took him some time to get used to the scale of the production as he was used to the ways of working on an indie set. He reportedly slowly calmed himself down by focusing on what was in front of the camera. He said,
“I felt very intimidated when I got hired on ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’. You do these indie movies, and you’re used to a certain size…And ultimately, the actual set was just big enough to accommodate exactly what you’re used to on an indie movie.”
His first MonserVerse film Godzilla Vs. Kong reportedly had a budget of $200 million, which was almost five times the size of his previous venture Death Note. The filmmaker mentioned that he decided to return to the franchise in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire to apply everything he had learned in the previous film. He said,
“I got to the end of ‘Godzilla vs. Kong,’ and I felt like I was just getting the swing of it. Not just in terms of the visual effects themselves, but…to know what an eyeline for a monster should be from somebody on the ground level…I came into this film knowing more about how to use the tools and with the desire to really push the visual effects and the animation.”
Despite having a smaller budget than the previous film, the filmmaker seemed to have been more experienced in handling the scale of the film and managing the workflow.
Adam Wingard Had To Come Up With A System To Direct Deaf Star Kaylee Hottle
With all the learnings he took from Godzilla Vs. Kong, filmmaker Adam Wingard seemed to be even more prepared to tackle the challenges that came with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. The director reportedly realized how much working with the actors involved green screen and just shots of the actors reacting to the monsters.
Wingard mentioned that he tried his best to give the right cues to the actors to help them emote fittingly to the monsters’ appearances in the film. He said in the Filmmaker’s Toolkit podcast,
“I have to give them a lot of sound cues, so we usually have a big PA system set up. Generally, I have a microphone, and I’m either just yelling ‘Roar!’ or I’m actually roaring into the microphone. Sometimes I have sound effects pre-prepared and I’ll play those to help them out.”
The film also starred a fourth-generation deaf star Kaylee Hottle, reprising her role as Jia from the previous installment. Wingard mentioned how giving cues to the actress involved a whole new challenge as he had to devise a complicated system with lights and the production crew giving visual cues for her to react. He said,
“We had to come up with a system where we had lights off-screen flashing to Kaylee that somebody would hit whenever I was cueing the actors. Sometimes we had people on ladders waving to Kaylee so she would know when to look. Everybody had to be synchronized, and that gets a little complicated.”
The filmmaker’s vision and managerial skills seemed to have worked as the film received a great opening at the box office on the weekend. According to Deadline, the film earned $80 million worldwide, bringing the total of the MonsterVerse to $2 Billion.
