Godzilla is popular. Between the surprise success of the excellent Minus One in 2023, the crossover with Marvel or even the arrival of a LEGO set, the Japanese monster is appearing on many media... And that's nothing compared to what awaits fans in 2031! We explain below what it is.
Godzilla, a fascinating character
After Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire in 2024, the kaiju will return to shake up Universal's Monsterverse in 2027 with Godzilla X Kong 2, for which you can discover a first cosmic teaser right here. As for Takashi Yamazaki, the director of Godzilla Minus One, he explained that he is officially working on the sequel, after having reaped critical and public acclaim in 2023. The giant radioactive lizard is also the star of a collaboration between Toho and Marvel in a series of epic crossovers featuring some of the House of Ideas' most popular superheroes like Superman and the Fantastic Four. There's no denying it: Kaiju, created by producer Tomoyuki Tanaka and director Ishirō Honda for Toho in 1954, is still relevant in 2025. At 71 years old, the cult Japanese monster hasn't aged a day, and his schedule from 2032 onwards even looks full...
Godzilla joins Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse
New pop culture characters regularly fall into the public domain. From Winnie the Pooh to Mickey Mouse, iconic figures of fiction become copyright-free after a certain period of time. Although the copyright protection period for films is currently 70 years after their release, as in France, the old Japanese copyright law, replaced in 1971, set this period at 38 years after the creator's death. This is why the Japanese police have estimated that Godzilla, created in 1954, will fall into the public domain in 2031, 38 years after the death of Ishirō Honda in 1993. This statement by the Osaka authorities follows the arrest of a 66-year-old man who was colorizing copies of the 1954 Godzilla without prior authorization. According to the Japan Times website, despite Toho's still-active copyright, he sold DVDs of the pirated film last November for 2,980 yen, or about 17 euros, after colorizing it. An illegal method - at least, until 2031...
Horror film fans only have a few years to wait to take possession of the monster and immerse it in atmospheres as grotesque as they are gory, as was already the case with the adorable Winnie the Pooh. Once it falls into the public domain, fans of the character will be able to create derivative works and/or reinvent it (soon a cosmic Godzilla?), but also and above all, to exploit it commercially. Be careful though, it's only the first version of the monster, the one from 1954, that is concerned: don't go selling T-shirts with the Godzilla from Minus One...
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