First off we can stop referring to the next Toho G-film as GODZILLA
MILLENNIUM since that title has been dropped in
favor of GODZILLA 2000. Kumi Mizuno who
was scheduled to appear in the film (her character was a
paleontologist) has been written out of the vastly revised
'final' draft of the film which will commence principal
photography in May. The script credit for the 'final' draft
(quotes here because some minor script changes may still be made
prior to, and even during production for the usual budgetary
reasons) goes to HIROSHI KASHIWABARA and WATURA MIMURA. SFX (as
reported previously) will be handled by Kenji Suzuki, with Visual
Effects producer Toshiro Ogawa and Visual Effects Supervisor
Tetsuo Ohya. Toho veterans Kenichi Eguchi will be the SFX
cameraman and Takao Okawara will direct the film.
Unconfirmed reports indicatethat Toho plans to shoot G-2000 in Cinemascope (although I guess
they'd call it Tohoscope) anyway sources indicate that they will
be using an anamorphic process. While details of the storyline
are being kept under wraps this much can be mentioned: Godzilla
will fight another monster, and the kaiju is said to be a
'non-specific simulacrum' of Godzilla himself created by aliens.
In other words we can expect that the resulting kaiju may be a
re-built/re-designed G-suit like Space Godzilla and Destroyah (or
maybe not).
The alien invaders design is
said to be 'non-humanoid' so don't expect Apes or Planet X-men.
Apparently their ship is discovered in a very remote location by
a Japanese research team. The ship may have crashed thousands of
years earlier and has laid dormant until energy from the
team's Exploratory vehicle accidentally re-activates it.
The aliens' strategy for invading other worlds is to take or
create the form of each world's most powerful creature, and on
Earth that's Godzilla. The storyline will only acknowledge GOJIRA
(1954) and GOJIRA (1984). The rationale for this is that this
story exists in an alternate timeline from the last six Godzilla
films (not to mention the original series).
Finally (for now anyway) the
best news is that while the film will reportedly have a much
lighter tone than say DESTROYAH, it is no longer being considered
a 'kiddie film' along the lines of the recent MOTHRA trilogy,
according to the sources at Toho. Of course their definition of
that type of film and that of American kaiju fans may differ
somewhat.
