The Big Picture

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is trending at the top of Apple TV’s charts, with positive fan reception and hopes for renewal. The first season expands on the universe of Godzilla, exploring the secretive organization Monarch and its connection to Godzilla. The executive producers discuss potential story arcs for Season 2, the writing process, and their excitement for the future of the Godzilla franchise.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has been trending at the top of Apple TV’s charts since it premiered last month. The series, starring Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell, is a continuation of Legendary’s Monsterverse that takes place across two time periods to tell the lore of the mysterious organization that first discovered Godzilla. With half the episodes released to the streamer and its fan reception going strong, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with the series executive producers Joby Harold, Tory Tunnell, and Chris Black, who also co-wrote the show, at this year’s CCXP in Sāo Paulo, Brazil.

Also starring Anna Sawai, Ren Watabe, and Kiersey Clemons, the first season of Monarch is a ten-episode sci-fi adventure that expands on the universe of Godzilla, taking a closer look at the secretive scientific organization Monarch. It takes place between the aftermath of the destruction of San Francisco in Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla (2014) and reaches back to the early days of the operation in the 1950s, where Army Officer Lee Shaw (played by both Kurt and Wyatt Russell) poses a threat to Monarch’s research.

In this interview, Harold, Tunnell, and Black express their enthusiasm for the show’s positive reception and their hopes for renewal. They discuss if they’ve planned story arcs for a potential Season 2, how their writing process works, what they’ll do differently going forward, and how they feel about the golden age of Godzilla with Godzilla Minus One in theaters and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire on the horizon. The trio also share updates for upcoming projects like the live-action My Hero Academia, Netflix’s Atlas with Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, and Sterling K. Brown, and Novocaine starring Jack Quaid. You can check out all of this and more in the transcript below.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Set after the battle between Godzilla and the Titans, revealing that monsters are real, follows one family’s journey to uncover its buried secrets and a legacy linking them to Monarch. Release Date November 17, 2023 Cast Christopher Heyerdahl , Mari Yamamoto , Kurt Russell , Qyoko Kudo Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 1

COLLIDER: Before we get started on Monarch, which I’m a huge fan of, I need to ask you an individual question. I looked on the always-accurate IMDb…

JOBY HAROLD: Always accurate.

Always accurate. I saw your name with My Hero Academia. Is it actually something you’re working on? Is this real?

HAROLD: Yes, it is. Absolutely. It is something I’m working on and loving working on. I’m excited to do it and get it out there. It’s a big one.

Image via Crunchyroll

Is this live-action? What is this version of it?

HAROLD: I can speak to the fact that it is live-action and I think that’s probably all I can speak to, but it’s a big deal in my life. I’m really enjoying it.

So this is something you’re actively working on now.

HAROLD: Yeah.

Got it. I’m really looking forward to that. I know what it is and I know how popular it is.

HAROLD: It’s amazing. It’s an amazing opportunity and I’m really excited about it.

Yeah, there’s no pressure on writing something like that. Nothing. So you guys are obviously all fans of Kurt and I’m just curious, after he gets cast how long do you give yourself before you start to geek out with him about his previous roles?

CHRIS BLACK: I think it was before we cast him. It was literally the very first time we met him, when we had to sit down and have a conversation with him and Wyatt about coming into the show. You’re just suddenly pinching yourself, like, “Oh my god, I’m sitting across a cocktail from Kurt Russell.” It started minute zero.

TORY TUNNELL: And he always has such tremendous humility and will say things like, “You know, I was in this movie in 1980 with John Carpenter, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? Escape from New York.”

HAROLD: We’re like, “We’ve heard of it.” [Laughs]

Is There a ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Season 2?

[Laughs] That’s just ridiculous. So I looked on the Apple website just now and I saw that Monarch is number one. Has Apple been emailing you? Have they said, “We’re really happy, this is aligning with what we expected?” Or have they been like, “We’ll tell you in 30 days?”

TUNNELL: They’ve said they’re greatly encouraged, and I think that they’re also metabolizing all the data. We’re really pleased to see that in Brazil we’re number one, not only in Apple but in all streamers. The roll-out has been incredible. It’s been really well-received and Apple has been thrilled.

BLACK: The streaming data is a little mysterious. The raw data is not shared with us, but everything we’ve heard from our team at Apple is that they’re very happy.

HAROLD: And it’s amazing to actually get that feedback pretty quickly because of the way the world works now, and understand that everything we worked so hard on is actually coming to fruition.

I love the sci-fi that Apple is producing. It looks so good, it’s easily the best sci-fi in any streamer or any channel, and I’m encouraged by the ratings that hopefully you guys will get a Season 2, which leads me to this question. Have you told the actors anything about saving dates in 2024?

TUNNELL: Good question. We don’t yet have a Season 2 pick-up. It’s going to rely on our audiences continuing to tune in. We would love to be working with our actors again next year.

Got it.

BLACK: When you do any television show, your cast, you have options for them, should the show be successful that they will return in the show, and we’re all optimistic that that’s gonna happen.

One of the problems with streaming, and it’s a huge problem, is the break between seasons, especially when you have a show like this that requires VFX. So my question is, how far along are you guys in terms, in case you get to do Season 2, developing the scripts or developing the ideas so that if Apple does call you and say, “We can do this,” you can hit the ground running?

BLACK: We’re certainly having those conversations. We’ve got a great team. We had a fantastic room of writers in the first season. Matt Fraction, who is my creative partner, developed a show with us together, and our corporate writers, we’re all really excited about moving forward. We can’t officially move forward until Apple pulls the trigger for us, but right now, yeah, definitely, things are cooking in everyone’s brains at this point.

I’m not sure how long it was after you wrapped to when the show came out? Was it a year? Was it more? What kind of runway do you need for the VFX on this show?

BLACK: If I’m recalling correctly, the last few shots came in about a month before the premiere, so it was pretty close to right up to the wire.

TUNNELL: We finished shooting a week before Christmas last year.

So it was about a year.

Is There a Story for ‘Monarch’ Season 2?
Image via Apple TV+

What did you guys learn during the making of Season 1 that you wish you knew on the first day of filming?

BLACK: It’s funny, I don’t know that there’s anything specific that I could say, “Oh, I wish we had done this better,” or, “I wish I had known this,” or, “I wish I had avoided this pitfall.” I think every job I work on you learn stuff that you take forward to the next thing. I think preparation. More preparation, more time, more lead time on everything is always helpful. Maybe bringing the VFX team in earlier, even into the story breaking and pitching process to get the perspective on things, about like, how big is this gonna be? How manageable is this gonna be? It’s certainly something we want to embrace in a potential second season.

HAROLD: And that’s within the fact that we spent four years getting the show on the app. So that was even with that much time to try and workshop ideas and get it right.

When you were writing Season 1, did you have the basic idea of, “Well, this is what we want to do in Season 2, if we’re so lucky. This is what we want to do in Season 3, if we’re so lucky,” or is it sort of very loose threads? How much did you think about what the full arc would be for some of these characters?

BLACK: I think for me, I like to work a little more open-ended and see, like, where are we gonna end up with these people? I don’t want to lock myself in and to work towards a second season that I know definitively what it’s gonna be because you have a whole season to figure out where these characters are going. Where they end up at the end of that season, what’s gonna platform you into a next season, might not be what you initially thought when you started that journey. So, we certainly always had ideas and things, but to me it’s a little like, “Okay, where’s the adventure gonna take us next?”

TUNNELL: And also, you have these fantastic scripts that the writers produce, but in production you’re rewriting, and in the edit you’re, again, finding the show. I think that when we finally are able to watch it as an audience, you’re digesting a new point of view of what the potentiality is. I think that’s what’s so exciting about Chris and the rest of the room is that they’re really able to embrace it and take it to the nth degree.

HAROLD: I also think once the show has settled through all those iterations, you then have that moment to incubate and discover where you wanna go afterwards, which is oftentimes different from where you thought you were gonna go.

It kills me to say this, but Apple sent me the last two episodes like a day or two ago and I’m at CCXP, so I didn’t have the time to watch. It kills me because I wanted to ask you about the finale. What are fans going to think when the finale ends?

BLACK: I hope they think, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this is over. I want more now.”

HAROLD: Renew Apple+ subscription.

BLACK: Exactly.

TUNNELL: I think they’ll be somewhat surprised by the profound emotionality that we get to in the climax, which you don’t always expect in something in this world. It ends with a great cliffhanger, as they all do.

BLACK: To Tory’s point, what, to me, is so satisfying about watching it myself as a viewer is how satisfying that emotional journey is that it feels like after 10 episodes it’s come to a completion. It’s almost like we planned it that way.

HAROLD: I have to say, they’re my favorite two episodes.

9 and 10?

HAROLD: Right.

The Godzilla Golden Age
Image via Apple TV+

I am a fan of Godzilla and this is a great time to be a fan of Godzilla because Godzilla Minus One is phenomenal, this show is fantastic, and you have a new Godzilla X Kong movie coming out. Do you guys view it as an amazing time or are you like, “Is there too much Godzilla in the marketplace?” How do you guys feel about it right now?

BLACK: Well, could there ever be too much Godzilla?

I personally say no, but you know what I mean.

BLACK: It’s funny, I think it’s a great time because those three projects you just referenced are all so different and they all sort of fall into such different lanes that they satisfy different desires. The TV show we’re doing is very different from the Legendary features, which is very different from Godzilla Minus One, which I have not seen yet but I hear is a masterpiece.

It doesn’t make sense how good it is. It’s literally one of the best films of the year and I can’t believe I’m saying that.

BLACK: I’ve heard that. I can’t wait to get out to see it. I think they all scratch different itches.

HAROLD: But certainly, the Legendary TV show versus the feature, in success both can feed off of each other and complement each other and add to each other’s audiences. I think that’s very much our hope is that we bring audiences to them and they bring audiences to us, and that it becomes…the word universe is thrown around, but in this instance, it might actually really, really work, and I think it’s something we’re so excited about.

It is true, though. There might be people that watch Godzilla Minus One and be like, “I need more Godzilla,” and they come to Monarch. Did you guys end up with a lot of deleted scenes in the first season?

BLACK: I wouldn’t say a lot. What we do, basically, in writing and producing the show is you’re creating a pile of material that then you go to the editing room and you shape an episode out, so everything doesn’t always get used for one reason or another. I wouldn’t say to expect a giant bonus Blu-ray of all the deleted scenes, but yeah, there’s always stuff, for whatever story reason, that doesn’t end up in the show.

One of the things that I’m sort of frustrated by with the streamers is they have this ability to release anything online, there’s no caveat or rules, but they don’t really embrace extras, deleted scenes. They don’t really push anything for the additional content. I’m wanting to know if you guys have any additional content or things like that that you could talk to Apple about for fans like me of releasing, or does it never come up in conversation?

TUNNELL: As Chris says, we’ve been working, really, to the bitter end. It’s a great thing to think about if there’s an appetite out there. It’s not a conversation that we’ve had and have been rejected.

BLACK: I will push back a little bit. I think Apple has done a really good job of putting out the behind-the-scenes content and interviews with the actors and stuff like that. You talk about the streaming world, I think it is a function, too, of the things like the Blu-ray box sets don’t come out.

That leads me to my other question. I love physical media just like a lot of people, has there been any talk about a Monarch 4K Blu-ray, anything like that?

BLACK: Well, I would love. It’s early days yet. We’re still airing the first season.

Oh, it’s not early enough.

HAROLD: I mean, you’re talking to someone, I have all my DVDs still and you’ll find me dead next to them. You need those things. You need physical media.

BLACK: In my Star Trek days, I contributed. I have the Blu-ray box sets of all four seasons of the Star Trek show I worked on. I did episode commentary and behind-the-scenes stuff and it was great. It was great fun. I love doing it. I would love to do it for the show.

What Is Netflix’s Jennifer Lopez-Led ‘Atlas’ About?
Image via Netflix

I also think there is now a resurgence a little bit with physical media especially as some of the streamers are pulling content. Anyway, before I run out of time, you guys are doing a project called Atlas, which sounds to me like it’s perfect timing in terms of what everyone is talking about. How happy are you with the timing, and for people that don’t know anything about it, what can you tease?

TUNNELL: We couldn’t agree more. It’s something that we didn’t mean to be so ripped-from-the-headlines with this big sci-fi adventure with Jennifer Lopez, but it is a conversation about AI and how can we have that relationship with AI? Is it a positive relationship? Is it a negative relationship? What’s kind of profound about the movie is that it is a tremendous character arc that Jen does an incredible job in relaying, she’s such an incredible actress, but it’s a spectacle and fun as a Memorial Day weekend release, and it should be something that will just be incredibly entertaining on the surface.

HAROLD: And you’ve got an actor in a role that she hasn’t got to explore before in a big genre movie, a big sci-fi adventure action movie with pretty extraordinary visual effects. I don’t think it’s what the audience will be expecting. I think they’ll be pretty amazed by it.

If I’m not mistaken, it’s about AI that views humanity like maybe they’re not supposed to be around anymore.

HAROLD: I feel like all AI stories circle the same story, but it wasn’t by design. We’ve been developing that movie for five or six years.

I think that’s the problem is if AI looks at humanity and what we do to this planet, you can make the argument that we’re a problem.

HAROLD: The movie does explore both sides of the equation in regards to whether it’s a benefit or a hazard, and tries to have an honest conversation about that within a bigger genre movie, as the best of those movies have done. We’re all in the wake of Terminator and everything before us, but it is certainly a movie that has ended up above the fold, but not by intent. It’s extraordinary how the world evolved around the movie and suddenly it’s coming out at exactly the right time.

People don’t realize you’ve been working on this for years. This is not something you turned on today. When do you think people are going to get a trailer and first looks and things like that?

HAROLD: We can’t speak to that, but I think pretty soon the first glimpses will be.

So it’s coming out sometime in December?

HAROLD: Definitely not something I can confirm.

What’s going on with this Novocaine?

TUNNELL: We’re really excited about that. That’s something that we plan to go into production on in the second quarter of next year with Jack Quaid, who is fantastic on The Boys and we just love him. He’s gonna be sublime in the role. Our directors of that, we feel like they’re one of those directors that have such a voice, they’re such auteur directors that it’s going to be a genre movie but with a very strong perspective.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is available to stream on Apple TV.

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