How can a Godzilla-sized franchise fit in a TV show like Monarch: Legacy of Monsters? One of the showrunners explains how this is built for TV
Diving into the human side of the kaiju story
There's a reason why we expect Godzilla on the big screen, and that's because Godzilla is - well, big. But new Apple TV Godzilla spinoff Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is challenging that movie-theater-only perspective, by bringing kaiju to television screens (and iPads too).
Popverse had a chance to chat with Monarch co-developer and executive producer Chris Black on what it was like to deal with that sense of scale on the small screen. Black shared, "Andy Goddard, our producing director, says the challenge of the show, doing it for television is balancing the epic scale of the monsters with the human scale of the story you want to tell."
Black continued, "A lot of people now have big TVs at home, and you can get a sense of scale... but this is for Apple TV, and so I think there's an expectation that people will watch this potentially on their iPads. It was important that we tell a human story, centered on the characters that you don't need to see in IMAX to understand what's going on."
As for the human story, Black said, "I think the story we want to tell was about a multi-generational family dynamic. The legacy of the formation of Monarch and how it impacts generations of the Randa family. Is this a legacy that you are willing to accept and embrace as your destiny? Or is it a curse you feel you need to break yourself from?"
We'll find out more about the Randa family soon, as Monarch: Legacy of Monsters debuts on Apple TV on November 17.
Godzilla vs. TV: Everything we know about Apple TV+'s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
