If a Godzilla Minus One sequel happens, the director already has some strong ideas for it

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After performing exceptionally well on a very modest budget and wowing critics as well as most moviegoers who gave it a chance, Godzilla Minus One should be marching towards the domestic market any second now. Meanwhile, director Takashi Yamazaki has already been teasing his ideas for a tentative sequel.

Empire had the chance to talk to Yamazaki and extract the information in early February, and it seems like the filmmaker's mind is already running ahead in hopes of Toho giving a sequel the green light sooner rather than later: "I would certainly like to see what the sequel would look like... I know that Shikishima’s war seems over, and we’ve reached this state of peace and calm – but perhaps [it’s the] calm before the storm, and the characters have not yet been forgiven for what has been imposed upon them."

The movie ended with Koichi Shikishima reuniting in a hospital with Noriko Oishi after she seemingly died because of the blast caused by Godzilla's atomic breath during his incursion into the heart of Tokyo. With the unusual family at the center of the story reunited and Godzilla utterly destroyed by a well-placed explosion inside his head, everything feels great... Until it doesn't. With an explicit callback to 2001's Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, the movie ends by showing the kaiju's still-beating heart starting to regenerate.

While 2016's Shin Godzilla (yet another reboot of the continuity) also ended on a cliffhanger, Minus One actually has a pretty solid chance of getting a sequel due to its worldwide success and how active the Godzilla brand as a whole is at the moment thanks to the MonsterVerse too.

Of course, having Yamazaki back in the writer-director's chair would maybe signify yet another epic and grounded historical drama surrounding the return of Godzilla. He has, however, more radical ideas he'd like to try: "I don’t know that anyone has pulled off a more serious tone of kaiju-versus-kaiju with human drama, and that challenge is something that I’d like to explore... When you have movies that feature [kaiju battles], I think it's very easy to put the spotlight and the camera on this massive spectacle, and it detaches itself from the human drama component."

Yamazaki certainly presents us with an exciting pitch, and one that Gareth Edwards and Legendary half-fumbled with their (otherwise successful) 2014 Godzilla reboot, which felt haunting and massive, but didn't pack a compelling enough human drama to surround the monsters clashing at the center of the movie. Needless to say, we'd be 100% interested in seeing how he could pull that off.

Whichever giant monster is your favorite, Popverse has you covered. We have a guide to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire's ending (and what it means for the broader MonsterVerse), as well as watch orders for both Legendary's MonsterVerse and Godzilla's overall movies, as well as why Godzilla Minus One left theaters early (and why New Empire could be to blame!), and if you're a Popverse premium member, a New York Comic Con-exclusive interview with the cast and crew of Legendary's kaiju-hunting drama Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.