Amazon Prime Japan has announced that it will begin streaming Godzilla Minus One two days after its physical release there. The land of the rising sun isn’t holding anything back for its most famous kaiju who celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. Godzilla Minus One released in Japan’s theaters on November 3rd, 2023 followed by U.S. release a month later on December 1 where it went on to win an Academy award for best visual effects. Now nearly six months later Amazon Prime Japan is ready to unleash the king of monsters again.
臨時ニュースをお伝えします
— Prime Video（プライムビデオ） (@PrimeVideo_JP) April 16, 2024
臨時ニュースをお伝えします
日本初
第96回アカデミー賞®
視覚効果賞を受賞した『ゴジラ-1.0』
5月3日(金・祝) 見放題独占配信が決定
繰り返します#プライムビデオにゴジラ襲来#ゴジラマイナスワン と読みます#ゴールデンゴジラウィーク#GGW pic.twitter.com/t1DQmA3WhZ
4K Physical Release:
There is still no word yet when a U.S. release will happen but hopefully fans in North America won’t have to wait too much longer for an official announcement. Meanwhile fans have already begun getting excited and hoping that when Toho does release it in the U.S., it will offer similar packaging as that being offered in Japan.
Academy Award
As mentioned previously, Godzilla Minus One managed to snagg an academy award for best visual effects. Now while that may not come as a huge surprise what should is that it did it on a meager budget of less than $15 million. GPU manufacturer NVIDIA was quite happy with this since the movie used its technology, plus the fact that all four other nominees also used NVIDIA technology.
Per NVIDIA:
“Godzilla: Minus One presented a unique challenge: making a well-known giant monster, or kaijū, feel terrifying anew.
With a budget under $15 million, small by today’s standards, the film’s VFX team relied on rapid iterations with the director to eliminate long review cycles, along with a heavily detailed computer-generated imagery (CGI) model to bring Godzilla to life.
Godzilla was ready for its closeup, the monster’s head alone containing over 200 million polygons. The animators injected nuanced, lifelike behaviors into the creature to round out its performance.
In addition, the film’s destruction scenes used a sophisticated, memory-intensive physics engine, allowing for realistic simulations of crumbling buildings and landscapes under destruction to further immerse audiences in the chaos.”