{"id":898571,"date":"2026-10-29T09:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T09:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898571\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T09:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T09:08:09","slug":"toho-ceo-on-the-company-distributing-godzilla-minus-one-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898571\/","title":{"rendered":"Toho CEO On The Company Distributing \u2018Godzilla Minus One\u2019 In The U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cIt was all a coincidence,\u201d Toho<\/a> CEO Matsuoka Hiro said this afternoon during a Q&A at the Tokyo<\/a> Film Festival when quizzed on his company\u2019s decision to re-enter the U.S. market in 2023 to distribute Takashi Yamazaki\u2019s box-office hit Godzilla<\/a> Minus One.<\/p>\n

\n\tGodzilla Minus One opened Stateside in December 2023 and earned more than $11.4 million on opening weekend, becoming the biggest Stateside debut of a foreign film that year and the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film in North America.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatsuoka told an audience at this afternoon\u2019s Q&A alongside AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer that until Godzilla Minus One, Toho had repeatedly failed to successfully distribute its films outside Japan, particularly in the United States.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe veteran exec said he only refocused efforts on launching a film in the U.S. after he visited the exhibitors union during a Stateside trip and was told the U.S. studios weren\u2019t making enough films to satisfy audience appetite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I became president of Toho, I went to the U.S. and the people from the box office union said the studios weren\u2019t making enough films,\u201d Matsuoka said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey said to me, \u2018Why don\u2019t you think of making some anime,\u2019 and that\u2019s when I realized anime was popular in the US. We also already had Godzilla, so we decided to distribute it in the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMatsuoka said there was concern across Toho when he first suggested they distribute Godzilla Minus One across the U.S. themselves. But the film was ultimately a success, and most importantly, he said, \u201cbrought the profit to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a strategy; we just tried,\u201d Matsuoka added.<\/p>\n

\n\tNext week, the latest Godzilla film, Godzilla Minus Zero, will open in Japan and the U.S. following its bow at the Tokyo Film Festival<\/a>. Toho\u2019s label GKIDS will distribute the film across North America beginning November 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt was all a coincidence,\u201d Toho CEO Matsuoka Hiro said this afternoon during a Q&A at the Tokyo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,28838,206,28840,17205,142769],"class_list":["post-898571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-godzilla","tag-movies","tag-toho","tag-tokyo","tag-tokyo-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}