The Matt Fraction-co-created Godzilla TV series for Apple TV+ will apparently be going by Hourglass as a working title during production. The show will reportedly focus on the Monarch agency seen in the Legendary Pictures monsterverse franchise, the logo for which looks a bit like a stylized hourglass turned on its side, so in terms of resonating with the show, without giving everything away to passersby who might see signs on location, it’s not a bad alias. The series was announced on Friday, with relatively few details attached. Riding high on the success of Godzilla vs. Kong, the series will apparently enter production soon.
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According to Deadline, the as-yet-untitled series will follow one family’s journey through a world where titans exist, and they’ll come to discover their secret ties to Monarch along the way. At this point, there is no word on whether existing human characters in the Godzilla films will carry into the show, but we know for sure the King of the Monsters will show up.
Legendary Television is producing the untitled TV series with Chris Black as executive producer. Fraction will serve as showrunner along with Black. Toho Company will also have several members on board including Hiro Matsuoka and Takemasa Arita.
This is part of an aggressive development plan for Legendary’s Monsterverse, with Netflix currently in development on Skull Island, an anime focused on King Kong and his life on the wild island. Audiences can reportedly expect to meet even more MUTOs in the series, and the same can be said for this new live-action series.
The initial reports indicated that, while they have a theatrical distribution deal with Warner Bros., Legendary never seriously considered taking the series straight to HBO Max, the WarnerMedia streaming service. The studio reportedly thought they could get a better price for the license on the open market, and Apple emerged as a frontrunner very early in the process.
Legendary previously took issue with Warner Bros.’ decision to push both Godzilla vs. Kong and Dune to HBO Max on the same day as their theatrical releases, complaining that it would eat into the movies’ box office take. They actually moved to block Warners’ plan to drop all of their 2021 releases on HBO Max day and date, arguing that making the announcement without giving their production partners a heads up was a decision made in bad faith. They later came to a deal with Warner, and the HBO Max release plan went ahead as scheduled. In June of last year, Legendary reportedly took a live-action Pokemon project to Netflix instead of HBO Max, because in spite of having come to an agreement, the relationship was still not 100%.
