Toho didn’t draw up a grand plan to crack the U.S. market. It responded to a supply gap. That is the central lesson from CEO Matsuoka Hiro’s Tokyo Film Festival Q&A, where he explained how Godzilla Minus One became the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film in North America.
The opening that reset expectations
Godzilla Minus One opened in U.S. theatres in December 2023 and collected more than $11.4 million in its first weekend. That made it the biggest Stateside debut for a foreign film that year, and ultimately the highest-grossing live-action Japanese title in North America.
The figure is not a Hollywood blockbuster number. For a self-distributed Japanese release, it changed the math: Toho kept the distribution margin, the audience data and the direct exhibitor relationships instead of selling them off in a licensing deal.
Why Toho tried again
Matsuoka said Toho had repeatedly failed to distribute its films outside Japan, particularly in the United States. The pivot began on a U.S. trip when the exhibitors union told him studios were not making enough films to satisfy audience appetite.
He recalled being asked, “Why don’t you think of making some anime,” and realised anime already had a U.S. audience. Toho also had Godzilla, so it picked that IP for its test.
What changed in the economics
“It wasn’t a strategy; we just tried,” Matsuoka said, adding that the film “brought the profit to us.” That is the difference between self-distribution and licensing: a licence turns a hit into a fee, while self-distribution lets the owner capture the box-office upside.
The result also reorders how Japanese IP can travel. Instead of a U.S. partner taking first position, Toho has built an in-house lane through GKIDS, which combines the Godzilla brand with the anime audience Matsuoka referenced. For media planners, the decision also changes where the marketing firepower sits: Toho controlled the U.S. release, so it controlled the positioning, the spend and the exhibitor relationships rather than a local partner with its own slate priorities.
What to watch
- Godzilla Minus Zero opens in Japan and the U.S. next week.
- GKIDS, Toho’s label, distributes the film across North America from November 6.
- Treat the opening as a live test of whether U.S. appetite for Japanese theatrical IP holds after the first record-setting run.
For ScreenStat readers, the takeaway is not the monster. It is the distribution model: a rights owner using a market shortage to test direct distribution, then scaling with a subsidiary label.
Source: Deadline
