Matt Shakman is a legendary television director. Few people in the TV industry are as trusted as Shakman when it comes to introducing a specific television show’s tone and style to the world. He’s a chameleonic filmmaker who can adapt to any kind of story and vibe. He’s directed great episodes of Everwood, Psych, House, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Children’s Hospital, The Good Wife, You’re the Worst, Game of Thrones, The Boys, Succession, and of course, every episode of the acclaimed MCU series WandaVision (which undoubtedly led to him being chosen as the director of the upcoming Marvel version of The Fantastic Four).

Shakman brings that confidence and bold decision-making to Apple TV’s new series, the first television show of the burgeoning MonsterVerse, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. The new 10-episode series from creators Chris Black and Matt Fraction jumps from decade to decade, character to character, continent to continent, in its chronicle of the clandestine Monarch agency. The secret organization has been aware of Godzilla and other MUTOs, or Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism (perhaps a more scientific term for kaiju, monsters, or titans).

With so much going on in the series, it must have been extremely complicated for a director to introduce the characters, world-building, and style of the show. But that’s exactly what Shakman did, directing the first two episodes with great success. Shakman spoke to MovieWeb about the series, and you can watch our video interview above.

Related: The Best Monsters in WB’s Monterverse, Ranked

Introducing Monarch: Legacy of Monsters to Audiences
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Release Date November 17, 2023 Cast Christopher Heyerdahl, Mari Yamamoto, Qyoko Kudo, Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell Main Genre Action Seasons 1 Studio Legendary Television, Safehouse Pictures, Toho Company
MovieWeb: With so much happening in this series, how on earth did you set a template for the other directors to follow after episode two? How did you develop a consistency, despite Monarch: Legacy of Monsters occurring across continents and decades?

Matt Shakman: That’s a great question, and it is a big challenge of the first episode of any show. You want to build a consistent world that these characters will inhabit, that the filmmakers that come after you can continue so that it feels like the same show from week to week, that the same characters that you love — even as they change and evolve — that they’re the characters that you’ve met at the beginning. There are so many different factors. This show was across continents, so we were shooting and scouting in lots of different countries, shooting in Japan and Canada, we were in Hawaii, we were designing monsters.

“We were putting together this wonderful cast, and each part is so specific that we wondered, ‘Will we ever find the right person for this role?’ And we somehow found a million unicorns, like everybody was just perfect for their role, and so lovely to work with, and so brilliantly talented. But I think as a filmmaker starting out a show, my job is to help those actors figure out who those characters are, so they can start to build them and grow them. It’s to build a visual language for the show.”

Matt Shakman: And I think for this one in particular, it had a few challenges. We were in multiple time periods. So it was about figuring out how to bring those time periods to life, but also make sure the audience knew where they were when they were. And it was also about telling a story about how monsters had changed the world, and how to tell that story from a human point of view, and what it’s like to be on the ground when Godzilla attacks.

We’ve seen awesome movies where you’re up in the stratosphere, and you see Godzilla and King Kong battling each other, and that’s amazing. What’s it like to be down on the ground? What’s it like when that one day and that one moment can change your entire course of your life? And so, that’s what this show is about. It’s about how monsters can change and affect the course of many people’s lives.

Related: Here’s Every Godzilla Movie, Ranked

Matt Shakman Is an Awe of Godzilla
Apple  TV+

MovieWeb: Godzilla has meant a lot of things over the years. In the 1950s, he originated as a kind of post-Hiroshima allegory for the atom bomb and nuclear war in general. What does Godzilla mean today, and to you?

Matt Shakman: Godzilla has resonated for me since I was a kid. I loved him as a kid, sitting on the couch with my dad in Ventura, California watching these original Toho films. I’ve loved him in the MonsterVerse and in the new Toho films that they’re putting out, which are extraordinary.

These characters are majestic in a way. They fill us with wonder and awe, and wonder is such a word that I love as a filmmaker because I think it’s not just something good. It also can be terrifying, but it fills you with awe. And I think we need that in our lives. I think we do look for mystery. We do look for things that are larger than our lives. And I think Godzilla has always been there.

Matt Shakman: But I think now what this show does so well is, it tells the story of the folks on the ground being affected by that, those moments of wonder, and this television show, which Matt Fraction and Chris Black created so beautifully, is a series of moments of wonder as these multiple storylines come together in surprising and interesting ways. Hopefully, there will be hundreds of years more of Godzilla storytelling to come.

Here’s to that. In the meantime, Monsters: Legacy of Monsters premieres globally on Friday, November 17, followed by one episode every Friday through January 12 on Apple TV+.

Stream on Apple