King Kong is going to have enough problems on his paws, fighting off pesky humans led by John Goodman and other hypervores on his home base of Skull Island, but it looks like he’s going to have to fend off Godzilla and other classic Toho monsters as well.
Warner Bros. just released the full credit roll to Kong: Skull Island, and it’s mostly filled with all the boring information you could get on IMDb. But eagle-eyed monster fans should notice a credit at the bottom that lists a group of licensed monsters from Japanese film studio Toho. The full credit found on SciFi Japan states: “Characters of ‘Godzilla,’ ‘King Ghidorah,’ ‘Mothra’ and ‘Rodan’ created and owned by Toho Co., Ltd.”
This is kind of surprising considering that credit wouldn’t have to appear if those monsters were simply hinted at. The Toho ownership credit is there because the legally licensed monsters show up on-screen or are mentioned by name.
That means the best case scenario is that Kong will battle a handful of monsters to kickstart their new shared universe. Kong: Skull Island technically takes place in the same film universe as the most recent Godzilla film and is set decades before it. The question is, will there be an epic clash between the monstrous characters, or does Goodman’s monster-hunter Monarch operative simply name check them in his search for Kong?
Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan are a lot of monsters for one movie. It seems like a waste to just throw them all in a post-credits sequence. If anything, their intro in Skull Island will be the perfect set-up for the expanded monster-verse that will continue in Godzilla: King of Monsters in 2019 and Godzilla vs. Kong, scheduled for 2020.
The battle begins when Kong: Skull Island hits theaters on March 10.
