So why is Godzilla KOTM's box office take below expectations?

I dunno

The movie was made by a fan for fans thus the general audience was alienated. They showed WAY too much in the trailers, and it had a bad fan fiction-type plot.

Its simply not a May property. This would have been bigger in March imo. Too much competition and I don't think general audiences have a ton of desire to see giant monster movies. Pac Rim, Skull Island.. Godzilla 2014 is the only one to break $200 million in the US.

The fact that we have this movie at all is a gift to the fans. I never thought we would see this and we may never again.

All of those are factors.

This movie was released around a lot of competition, Aladdin, The Secret Life of Pets 2, X-Men Dark Pheonix, and more. Godzilla can be big, but it is not big enough to compete with all of these other big movies.

A lot of people do trust RT so word of mouth is probably what will get people to see this movie, there is the chance it'll have strong legs.

I also think a lot of people may have lost interest due to the five year wait, and even the two year wait from kong.

I also think it has something to do with the name and the type of movie it is. KOTM is a movie by a fan for the fans. Not many people know who Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan are, so they will be less inclined to watch it because they don't know the characters/monsters.

also, the name doesn't really hint at how action packed of a movie this is, people may still have a bad taste in their mouth after Godzilla 2014 (which i personally loved) but a lot don't like that movie, they may have thought this was a repeat of that. With Godzilla vs Kong, people know it will be Godzilla fighting Kong, and almost everybody knows who those two are.

Anyway, G:KOTM is a movie for the fans, GvK is going to be a movie for the general audience. That may save the Monsterverse.

The movie didn't exactly have a great release schedule. It's surrounded by huge openings, and the fact it is 5 year after the first doesn't help. The reviews weren't exactly great either so anyone on the fence probably opted out over 1 reason or another.

I don't think the 5 year gap was that important, especially since you don't really *need* to watch Godzilla 2014 to watch KOTM (maybe taking the '2' out of the title could've helped), but the competition didn't help either. I think it would be better off to release it later (The Realist mentioned a March release, but that would end up sandwiched between Captain Marvel and -most importantly- Endgame, so dunno if it would be the best)

Plus it is the end of semester for a lot of countries. Exams tend to leave little free time, so (at least over here) people get more picky about how to spend it.

I still don't understand why Warner Brothers moved the movie from March to May. Supposedly this was a move out of confidence, but WB's long history for showing strength via release schedules has bit them in the ass before. I have no idea why they thought a summer, post-Avengers release was going to work.

There's only so much money to go around and clearly audiences decided Godzilla was the one to axe in order to save some cash. Had it been released during its original date, with fewer big movies to siphon money before it, it might have done better.

Rotten Tomatoes factors in to this as well, because audiences put too much stock into it--Especially when there's so many Blockbusters being released round the same time and only so much money to go around.

And finally, the fact is this movie is just not connecting with a lot of general audiences. As cool as references to the Shobijin are, things like that will go over audience members' heads and could have been cut entirely. Easter Eggs are fun, but the movie is a little self-indulgent and only a niche group of audience members are going to catch it all.

Too many people read reviews from places like Rotten tomatoes. They are notorious for not liking much Scifi. Real fans enjoy these movies because they know what they're going to get. The Millennials need everything spelled out.

macumbalove: Fan-ficition plot? I'm not saying KOTM has a great plot, but I've seen many movies with a worse plot. 

Also, the thing with KOTM being a fan movie made for fans, yeah, I can see that. Although I don't think it was set out to be limited only to appeal to fans. The studio would want the movie to have a broad appeal to maximize the box office. 

That goes back to the polarizing reception between critics and general audience to the film. Critics by and large hated it while most moviegoers loved it. What does that really say?

I kinda agree in that a March release would've been beneficial. Even releasing it alongside Dumbo and Shazam would've helped gained the movie some solid ground since neither really shook the box-office.

At this point, audiences have seen way too many movies in theaters in the last month. And we have Toy Story 4, the next Spider-Man (now a lot more bigger after the impact of Endgame) and The Lion King. Like someone pointed out, most people decided to strike off Godzilla from their list.

The Rotten Tomatoes scores only helped make their decision easier. Had the scores been higher, we probably would've seen an uptick on Sunday as well as the second weekend.

Maybe releasing at least a week earlier could've helped.

Would've had to deal with Endgame's legs, but it might have been manageable before the other films started to really release.

The more interesting question for studios now is whether they have any strategy to counter the power and influence that RT have over moviegoers. Don't get me wrong, film criticism have their place in academia and among the general newspaper readership, but to let it have such a hold on decision-making for moviegoers...not so good.

The only idea studios seem to have is to delay the lifting of review embargo as late as possible. But that in many cases would just seem to back-fire, as it will confirm for the audience the movie will get bad reviews. 

Yeah, they released the film around way too much competition. KOTM would have made a lot more were it released in march.