Godzilla vs. Kong has taken the OTT platform, HBO Max by storm. And does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. The official trailer for the battle of the titans was released on YouTube almost 2 months back and had managed to gather 82 million views on the video alone. Since its release not just in cinemas, but also on the OTT platform called HBO Max, the movie has already registered a massive record. The GVK (Godzilla vs. Kong) has already managed to pull in a massive revenue of over $120 million alone. Released on the 26th March 2021, the movie has already managed to surpass Wonder Woman 1984’s total box office earnings.
The marketing campaign that Legendary and Warner Bros. adopted for the marketing of the GVK, has to be taken into consideration. The marketing campaign started with the trailer release on YouTube, which helped the houses to get the audience hyped up about the movie. And even gather the much-needed attention much before the actual release of the trailer, which was initially delayed. The delay in the release for the trailer helped in gathering the much-needed social media coverage surrounding the trailer and the movie. The day the trailer was released, GVK became the talk of the town on almost all major social media platforms. The trailer was well received by the audience and got them all worked up for the battle between the King of the Jungle and the Alpha Titan. The trailer showcased a massive battle between the two titans Godzilla & King Kong, that helped to got views of the trailer up to 82 million in 2 months.
Legendary was also able to keep the momentum going for the following two months, with minor leaked footage and merchandise surrounding the narrative of the story. The views for GVK amassed views which were more than the views for Wonder Woman 1984 and Tenet combined. That made up and prepared an even better stage for the release of the long-awaited battle of the alphas. But many of the movie geeks were worried about the hype surrounding the movie.
As they were worried that even though the trailer may have been amazing, will the actual movie be able to deliver? Luckily for the fans and the viewers, the movie did very well in terms of story, and even though dipped a few points on rotten tomatoes because of a few Justice League fans bombing the review of GVK. The movie has been rated still fresh by Rotten tomatoes, which will help the movie redeem itself on the movie rating platform.
The movie was released in theaters and on HBO Max as well, which ensured that the box office earnings may be affected. But the movie turned out to be a far better success than any other movie in the year 2021. Although no concrete streaming numbers have been shared by the HBO Max. HBO Max, however, has confirmed that GVK has broken all the previous records of holding the highest 4-day debut viewership of any other movie or series that are currently present on the OTT service platform of HBO Max. The movie has broken all the previous viewership records in the history of the streaming service since it was launched on May 27, 2020. This means that GVK had a higher viewership in the first 4 days, since the release, which is even higher than Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Frankly, it is not that surprising that the GVK movie did much better within the first few days of release. Because as compared to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the hype surrounding the battle of the Monster Verse was a much-awaited or much-needed reprise from the normal superhero narrative. Although the movie did revolve around the good prevailing over the bad narrative, but this time it was being done by two extremely powerful beings.
Both Kong and Godzilla have had their previous runs, and bringing them together on one screen were like putting Thanos and Darkseid in a battle to the end. It is interesting to note that the OTT viewership numbers will have no direct effect on the box office earnings of the movie. But what is also interesting to note is that GVK was able to generate close to $50 million within its first-week run, considering we are still in a pandemic-stricken phase and have not fully recovered from the attack of the Covid-19 virus.
