It’s been many years in the making, and collectively probably around a billion pounds of bulk, but massive ape Kong and enormous lizard Godzilla are slated to do cinematic battle in Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs’ favorite year, 2020. While we knew the combatants, we didn’t know the director tasked with making it happen. That changed late Tuesday afternoon when The Hollywood Reporter shared the news that Adam Wingard would be taking up those gargantuan reins.
Wingard, along with writer Simon Barrett, have delivered a handful of fantastic throwback horror movies in recent years, including 2011’s You’re Next, 2014’s The Guest, and last year’s tragically underrated Blair Witch. He’s also the directing, without Barrett, this year’s Netflix original film Death Note, based on the manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.
Though none of Wingard’s projects have been of the scale (pun intended) connected with the two kings of monsters, Legendary has a track record of giving their MonsterVerse films to tested directors of smaller films, such as Gareth Edwards in 2014’s Godzilla, Jordan Vogt-Roberts in this year’s Kong: Skull Island, and Michael Dougherty for 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
In March, Legendary gathered a writers’ room to take on the task of penning Godzilla vs. Kong‘s script, with Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Terry Rossio taking lead. More information will be forthcoming as we get it.
Let us know your thoughts on Wingard directing big ol’ monsters in the comments below!
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Images: Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
