Shin Godzilla GKIDS re-release

[lhb412]

It's official; GKIDS has snapped up the rights to Shin Godzilla and the new (to us in North America, at least) 4K version of the film will go back into theaters this August before being made widely avaliable on home media.

... and the deliberately overwhelming Japanese text is back!

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/shin-godzilla-gkids-north-american-distribution-rights-1236415553/

[Baltan II]

Very excited for this! I had the original Blu-Ray but this likely means a 4K release and maybe we'll get ORTHOchromatic too.

[lhb412]

^ I'm hoping for ORTHOcromatic and as many other extras they can squeeze on a disc!

[Kailem]

ORTHOchromatic on any new home release would definitely get me to double-dip, as long as it ended up either being region-free or getting a UK release as well.

I'll definitely keep my eye out for any possible theatrical release over here too. It's been a minute since I last watched Shin, so I'm definitely overdue a re-watch one way or another.

[Benjamin Haines]

Great news! I like how the GKids press release makes a point to mention "restored text cards" in this upcoming re-release. I've always been satisfied with the clean presentation that Funimation put on disc but I do remember how delightfully distracting all of the Japanese text cards were when I first saw Shin Godzilla in a theater, so I'll be glad to finally own that version.

SciFi Japan posted the press release too, with the usual hi-res image of the re-release poster: https://www.scifijapan.com/godzilla-toho/gkids-to-release-shin-godzilla-4k-to-cinemas-august-14

[lhb412]

Fandango has listings up for my local AMC theaters.

[Kailem]

And along with this re-release, apparently Toho's international head Koji Ueda recently told Bloomberg that a sequel could still potentially happen!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-17/godzilla-studio-toho-plans-more-films-sequels-anime-and-jujutsu-kaisen?embedded-checkout=true

Annoyingly it's one of those "sign up to see more"-type deals so I can't see his *exact* wording, with some second-hand sources presenting it as him saying "that there is still potential for a sequel to Shin Godzilla", which sounds a lot less certain than "SHIN GODZILLA 2 CONFIRMED, HIDEAKI ANNO AND SHINJI HIGUCHI ARE BACK, ACTUALLY IT'S OUT RIGHT NOW AND YOU ALREADY OWN THE BLU-RAY!!!!". But either way the fact that Toho might be actively considering a follow-up is exciting!

[lhb412]

Even with Minus One's enormous international success, the fact that Shin was a once in a lifetime phenomenon in Japan means that Toho will probably never close the door on the prospect of a follow-up.

Gotta say, if anything, I'd like Shin Godzilla vs. Shin Ultraman: it'd take very little massaging to make the two continuities line up, plus I feel like Shin Ultraman was maybe too invincible (until Zetton) and I think Shin Godzilla (and his further mutations) would give him a run for his money.

It'd be a nice capper for Anno and Higuchi and would also be a celebration of two of Japan's most beloved characters!

[Kailem]

It'd be awesome if something like that ever happened. It'd take a little finessing, but not *too* much to join those movies directly, especially given the nods to Shin Godzilla that are already in Shin Ultraman.

Apparently the scuttlebutt is that this is more than just a "maybe, possibly one day it might happen" kinda thing; supposedly we might be getting an official announcement that Shin Godzilla 2 is happening this Friday at SDCC. If that's the case it would certainly make more sense why Shinji Higuchi is going to be there at the Godzilla panel.

Also a new trailer for the re-release has been, uh, released:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNox1a18qqw

[lhb412]

Apparently my local Cinemark is offering some Shin Godzilla showings in the D-box format, where the seats move and whatnot? Considering it!

[Kailem]

Well, so much for that "word on the street" about Shin Godzilla 2 being announced at SDCC. Shinji Higuchi being at yesterday's panel made it feel *possible*, but at the same time I feel like Toho is never going to want to announce a new domestic Godzilla movie outside of their own events, so I was never 100% convinced it was going to happen there.

I *do* think it's likely we're actually going to get a sequel though, just obviously not one that's going to be announced just yet.

[Benjamin Haines]

I'm just looking forward to seeing Shin Godzilla in a theater again next month.

[lhb412]

Really getting hyped for this re-release. Just read the section on this movie from the new "The First 70 Years" book and now I'm finally going through my copy of the Art of book.

... is the purple breath really due to Anno's love of Prince?!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ I remember reading that here on MZ back in 2016! Let me pull up the old post.

https://www.scifijapan.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=21125&p=482212#p482212

On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 11:17 am, Mac wrote:
"August is reporting that Shin-Gojira's purple charge is Anno's tribute to Prince, who he was a big fan of."

Prince passed away in April 2016, about a week after Toho released the first Japanese trailer for Shin Godzilla when the movie was deep in post-production, so if the purple ray was meant as a Prince tribute then it must have been either a late-game decision or something that Anno had been planning before Prince passed.

Still, there is at least one piece of Shin concept art that depicts Godzilla glowing purple, and the purple ray does look pretty identical to the ray emitted by the title character in Giant God Warrior Appears In Tokyo...

I'm thinking Anno had always intended to give that purple ray to Godzilla and he later chose to dedicate it to Prince because he's a fan.

[lhb412]

Saw this earlier. Technical presentation was great...

... but man; viewing this movie after '20/'21 is a trip. Of course, it was originally intended as a metaphor for Japan's 3.11 triple disasters, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch this again without thinking of it as a Covid-19 movie. My stomach was in knots watching this!

[lhb412]

Fandango is showing this playing through next week at my local theaters, but with reduced showtimes (one a day). A single showtime for Orthocromatic had popped up on the 31st.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Likewise, the three theaters playing this nearest to me (all an hour's drive away) still list their last regular screenings for this Thursday but the Regal now lists three more showtimes this Friday, one on Sunday, one on Monday, two on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, and then two screenings of Orthochromatic on Sunday the 31st. The GKids website is also now advertising Orthochromatic as a limited-time event: https://gkids.com/films/shin-godzilla/

I saw this at the Regal on Monday evening. Shin Godzilla is as fantastic as ever and it was great to see it in a theater again. We sat in the third row, the closest to the screen that I've ever sat for a Godzilla movie, not at the very front but close enough that the screen towered above us without making the subtitles hard to read. It really helped emphasize the gigantic scale of Godzilla, which the cinematography depicts very effectively!

Of course this was the first time in nine years that I've seen this movie with all of the onscreen Japanese titles intact but it wasn't nearly as visually overwhelming as I remember, and I think that's because the English translation text is smaller than last time. It also retains the onscreen Japanese subtitles whenever characters speak English this time, as it would have had in Japan. I suppose this is how it will be presented on the upcoming GKids disc releases.

Despite the inclusion of the onscreen titles and subtitles from the original Japanese release, I noticed that this is not the original theatrical '1.0' version of the movie but the '2.0' version with the two VFX shots that were altered for home media. The first shot at 52:36 is when the helicopters fly in front of the camera toward Godzilla; the '2.0' shot has an added distortion effect depicting the heat convection from the helicopter engines. The second shot at 59:55, right after Yaguchi calls Godzilla "a perfect organism surpassing man," is the close-up profile of the left side of Godzilla's face; the '2.0' shot is a completely different piece of animation. The original '1.0' version of the movie is what played theatrically in Japan and other countries back in 2016, with the only known home media release of the '1.0' version being the 2017 Hong Kong blu-ray disc. This video shows the different versions of those two VFX shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qammqRhMdeo

I can happily say that I didn't notice any more altered shots in this re-release. The movie's weakest VFX shots were not tweaked at all here, not even the shot of Godzilla waddling toward screen left after he finishes using his atomic breath.

The 4K transfer certainly looked detailed on the big screen, and I was sitting so close that I could see the texture of the theater screen during bright scenes. That's how clean this transfer is, although there wasn't any print damage to clean up in the first place, so aside from the resolution it doesn't really look any different from how it's always looked. I guess the 2016 American theatrical release must have been a 2K transfer.

[lhb412]

Just left my second viewing. Checking my movie log I see that this was my fifth theatrical viewing! I think I'll save Orthocromatic for that deluxe box set I've already preordered...

[Benjamin Haines]

I saw Shin Godzilla twice during its 2016 theatrical run, so I'm planning to make Orthochromatic my second viewing this time.