Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the fifth movie of the MonsterVerse series, but it's missing some regular characters.
While Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Kaylee Hottle reprise their roles as Dr Ilene Andrews, Bernie Hayes and Jia, respectively, there's no room in the new movie for the likes of Millie Bobby Brown's Madison Russell or Kyle Chandler as her father Mark.
There are other MonsterVerse characters who haven't returned, but the previous two movies – Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs Kong – have centred heavily on Madison, so it was thought she might return.
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Director Adam Wingard told Digital Spy that while "there could be a place for her in the future", Madison didn't quite fit into this story he wanted to tell.
"It just felt like we wrapped up her King of the Monsters arc in the last movie. When it came to designing the story for this film, my motto the entire time was simplicity is key," he explained.
"We really wanted to bring down the amount of characters in the movie so we could have a more intimate journey with them. That's why our group is relatively small on both the monster side and the human side, so that you really get more time to be with them.
"If you look at a lot of the MonsterVerse movies, a lot of the films have a whole lot of characters to them and that's always been a cool approach. But with this film, we're five movies in and you have to innovate and do things you've never seen before, even the approach to the structure of the story and the characters was new.
"We wanted to take a more intimate dive, and these were the characters that just made the most sense when telling Kong's story in Hollow Earth that's the catalyst to everything."
Joining the returning cast on their journey into the Hollow Earth are franchise newcomers Dan Stevens as Trapper and former EastEnders star Alex Ferns as Mikael.
The sequel sees Godzilla and Kong reluctantly team up again to take down an undiscovered threat in Hollow Earth that could challenge their existence – as well as the fate of humanity itself.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is released in cinemas on March 29.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
