by Benjamin Haines » Sun Apr 28, 2013 4:05 pm
Godzilla's real competition is Dawn of the Planet of the Apes because it opens the very next week. The Good Dinosaur will definitely draw families en masse but Godzilla is action/adventure and its box office success doesn't hinge on families. Plus, Dinosaur opens two weeks later and in a summer as packed with potential blockbusters as 2014 it's unlikely for any of them to hold the #1 spot for more than two consecutive weekends anyway.
With the May 16 release date, Godzilla is well-positioned for a potentially smashing debut, since The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will have been out for two weeks by then, but Apes is direct competition. It's action/adventure, it's a sequel to a well-liked predecessor, and it opens a week after Godzilla.
Ultimately, though, Godzilla's domestic box office prospects beyond its opening week are more dependent on how good the movie is and how audiences react to it than on what else is opening after it. Plenty of hit blockbusters have played strong for weeks in the presence of direct competition because they were crowd-pleasers.
