(Welcome to Will There Be a Sequel?, a series where we answer that question and explore what comes next.)

When "Godzilla vs. Kong" stomped its way into theaters in March 2021, it scored the best box office haul for a movie on opening weekend since "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" in December 2019. The long-delayed blockbuster reaped the benefits of two marquee monsters and pent-up demand for moviegoing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also served as the culmination of the four-film Monsterverse that Legendary Entertainment had been building since it released its first "Godzilla" film, directed by Gareth Evans, back in 2014.

"Kong: Skull Island" introduced King Kong into the MonsterVerse in 2017, while "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" introduced such classic kaiju as King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan in 2019. Then, after a release date shuffle pushed their crossover back a year, Godzilla and Kong finally got a chance to meet and duke it out onscreen, leveling much of Hong Kong in the process. Following "Godzilla vs. Kong," they've retired to their separate corners of the tentpole boxing ring, but is there a chance we'll see them tearing up cities again in a rematch? The answer to that is somewhat complicated, and that's why we're here.

Spoilers for "Godzilla vs. Kong" are fair game from here on out.

Previously In Godzilla Vs. Kong

King Kong and Godzilla are two characters with a long history, some of which is deeply intertwined. In "Godzilla vs. Kong," the humans are on a quest to bring Kong back to the Hollow Earth where his kind once ruled. Godzilla intercepts the navy convoy carrying Kong and the two monsters have their first big fight on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. Kong is in chains and the ocean is not his natural habitat, so Godzilla has him at a disadvantage, and it's only by playing dead that Kong and the remaining battleships (the ones not destroyed during their epic throwdown) are able to survive.

In its third act, "Godzilla vs. Kong" pulls out another heavy-hitting character from the Godzilla mythos: namely, Mechagodzilla, a giant with stronger atomic breath than even the King of Monsters. Kong has returned from the Hollow Earth with an axe fashioned out of the glowing blue dorsal fin of one of Godzilla's ancestors. With it, he seems to get the better of Godzilla, and if there was ever any doubt, we've got Alexander Skarsgard's character there to tell us, "Looks like round two goes to Kong."

Godzilla soon recovers, however, and beats Kong again, subduing him with a foot to the chest and thereby establishing himself as the undisputed monster king. The emergence of Mechagodzilla causes them to put aside their differences and team up. Kong comes away with the consolation prize of Mechagodzilla's head, and he and Godzilla share a moment before Godzilla retreats into the ocean and Kong takes his place on the throne of the Hollow Earth kingdom.

Will There Be A Sequel?

What makes any potential rematch between Godzilla and Kong in the MonsterVerse complicated is the deal the Legendary that struck with Toho — the studio that created and owns Godzilla — in the first place. Godzilla is the subject of three dozen feature films but only four of those were made in Hollywood. The other 32 come from Toho, including "Shin Godzilla," the last live-action Japanese Godzilla movie.

Back in 2017, Shinji Higuchi, the co-director of "Shin Godzilla" with Hideaki Anno, made it known that Toho could not move forward on a "Shin Godzilla" sequel until after the Godzilla character had wrapped his tenure with Legendary. This is because Legendary didn't want to have other live-action Godzilla films crowding the market and competing with them or overexposing their borrowed monster. The only reason that Toho was able to make "Shin Godzilla" is because it fast-tracked the movie and released it in the five-year gap between Legendary's "Godzilla" and "Godzilla: King of the Monsters."

Toho has been biding its time these last few years, co-producing or licensing animated Godzilla movies like "Godzilla: The Planet Eater" and TV shows like this year's "Godzilla Singular Point." However, we've also heard that it has ambitious plans for Godzilla and wants to rebuild its own shared universe with him and other monsters, possibly making as many as one new film every year or two.

If there's a sequel to "Godzilla vs. Kong," it won't necessarily feature Godzilla.

A Godzilla Vs. Kong Sequel … Without Godzilla?

The success of "Godzilla vs. Kong" in theaters quickly brought word that a sequel was in development, with director Adam Wingard possibly set to return after he completes some of his other outstanding commitments like his "Face-Off" sequel and his live-action "Thundercats" movie.

"Son of Kong" is the direction that Legendary is said to be going with its "Godzilla vs. Kong" follow-up. This would seem to position it as more of a Kong-centric project like "Kong: Skull Island." That film already set a precedent for a MonsterVerse movie by confining itself mostly to one location, so with Kong down in the Hollow Earth now, it might make sense for Legendary to use this proposed sequel to explore that terrain and more of Kong's family tree along with other new monsters.

Screenwriter Max Borenstein has been involved with the story and/or script of every MonsterVerse movie to date, and he's said that he would like to see a "Godzilla vs. Kong" sequel without humans. Godzilla already has one solo film more than Kong does in the MonsterVerse, so if nothing else, "Son of Kong" would allow Kong to catch up and be on even footing with Godzilla again, if and when they do reunite for Legendary. Maybe Legendary and Toho can hammer out the terms of a new deal, or maybe, by then, Toho will have blown everyone's minds with its own shared Kaiju-verse.

"Shin Godzilla" is arguably a better Godzilla film than any of the ones we've seen from Legendary, and Legendary's King Kong films are certainly better than any of the old Japanese ones, so maybe it's better to let the Japanese and American studios handle their own homegrown characters from here on out.

Read this next: How The Original 'King Kong' Influenced 'Godzilla' (And How Lesser-Known Dino Movies Influenced Them Both)

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