Little Schmidt Productions Archive
Godzilla x Kong:
The New Empire
Feature Film · 2024
Two titans. A hidden empire. A threat powerful enough to change both worlds.
The Production
Overview
The Story
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire pushes the MonsterVerse deeper beneath the surface of the Earth, turning Hollow Earth from a mysterious destination into a vast ecosystem with its own histories, communities and titan hierarchy.
Kong has made a life in Hollow Earth, but victory has not solved his isolation. He is the last member of his kind he knows, living in an enormous world that still offers no real sense of belonging. When he encounters a young ape named Suko, that loneliness leads him towards a hidden civilisation ruled through fear.
At its centre is the Skar King, a tyrannical great ape who controls other apes and commands the ancient ice Titan Shimo. His empire changes Kong's story. The search for family becomes a confrontation with a version of leadership built on domination rather than protection.
On the surface, Godzilla continues acting as Earth's balancing force. Unusual signals and escalating Titan activity draw him towards a threat he appears to understand before the human characters do. His path takes him through new confrontations and ultimately back towards Kong.
Dr. Ilene Andrews remains responsible for Jia, whose connection to the Iwi becomes increasingly important. Strange signals from Hollow Earth affect Jia directly, leading Andrews, Bernie Hayes and the unconventional Titan veterinarian Trapper into a new expedition below the surface.
The journey reveals a surviving Iwi civilisation and a deeper history connecting Jia, Mothra, Kong and the ancient conflict involving the Skar King. Human mythology and Titan history begin to overlap, giving the film's enormous battles a cultural framework beyond simple territorial conflict.
Kong cannot defeat the Skar King and Shimo alone. Godzilla's path towards greater power and Kong's need for an ally eventually bring the two former rivals together again — not because their conflict has disappeared, but because the new threat is larger than either titan's individual territory.
The final battles move between Hollow Earth and the surface, including Rio de Janeiro, while the story resolves around liberation rather than conquest. Kong helps free the enslaved apes, Shimo is released from the Skar King's control, and the MonsterVerse emerges with a much larger map than the one it began with.
The Production Challenge
Creating a world where humans are no longer the largest thing in the frame.
MonsterVerse production design operates at two scales simultaneously. Human performers need tangible environments and objects they can inhabit, while those same environments must later support creatures hundreds of feet tall. Queensland's studios, rainforest and varied landscapes gave the production a physical foundation for that scale.
Hollow Earth
Real vegetation, constructed environments and Queensland landscapes provide texture beneath the digitally expanded ecosystems and Titan geography.
Titan Scale
Architecture and terrain are designed to remain readable when Godzilla, Kong, Shimo and the Skar King dominate the frame.
Human Scale
Vehicles, Iwi environments and practical set pieces give performers physical reference points inside a story increasingly driven by creatures.
Humans & Titans
Main Cast
The human ensemble is deliberately compact, allowing the expedition into Hollow Earth to run alongside long stretches of visual storytelling in which Kong and the other Titans carry narrative information through movement rather than dialogue.
Rebecca Hall
Dr. Ilene AndrewsA Monarch anthropological linguist and Jia's adoptive mother. Andrews returns to Hollow Earth when Jia begins responding to a mysterious signal connected to the surviving Iwi civilisation.
Brian Tyree Henry
Bernie HayesPodcaster and Titan conspiracy investigator whose experiences in the previous film have not translated into mainstream credibility. He joins the expedition hoping to document proof of what is happening beneath the surface.
Dan Stevens
TrapperAn eccentric Titan veterinarian and former acquaintance of Andrews. Trapper brings practical field expertise, confidence and humour to an expedition where conventional medical and scientific rules rarely apply.
Kaylee Hottle
JiaThe last known survivor of Skull Island's Iwi community and Kong's closest human connection. Jia's sensitivity to the Hollow Earth signal leads to the discovery of another Iwi civilisation and a larger role in Titan history.
Alex Ferns
MikaelA member of the Hollow Earth expedition whose scepticism and temperament contrast with Trapper's familiarity with the dangers of Titan territory.
Fala Chen
Iwi QueenLeader within the hidden Hollow Earth Iwi civilisation. Her community preserves knowledge about the ancient Titan conflict and Jia's place within the unfolding events.
Behind the Production
Queensland becomes
a monster world.
The production returned to Queensland, a region already deeply connected with the MonsterVerse. Gold Coast studio infrastructure and the Daintree Rainforest gave filmmakers both controlled stage space and dense natural environments that could be transformed into Hollow Earth and the film's international settings.
A major production base with room for Titan-scale construction.
Screen Queensland records the Gold Coast and Daintree Rainforest as filming locations for the production. Village Roadshow Studios and the wider Gold Coast production ecosystem supplied large stages, workshops, tanks and experienced crews. Producer Eric McLeod highlighted Queensland's combination of studio infrastructure and diverse nearby environments as a reason the MonsterVerse repeatedly returned to the region.
That combination matters on a film where practical builds must interface continuously with large-scale digital creatures and environments.
Real rainforest gives Hollow Earth complexity for free.
Queensland's Daintree region supplied dense natural texture that could become part of the Hollow Earth environment. Vegetation, uneven terrain, humidity and changing natural light create visual complexity that is difficult to reproduce entirely on a stage.
Digital work can then enlarge and alter the ecosystem while retaining the irregular detail of a real landscape underneath it.
Queensland also stood in for the world above.
The production used the Gold Coast beyond its studios and rainforest environments. Surfers Paradise was transformed for material representing Rio de Janeiro, demonstrating how the same production region could supply both the hidden Titan world and a recognisable international cityscape.
Little Schmidt Productions
Production
Contribution.
A production combining rainforest, large studio builds, international screen geography and effects-heavy Titan sequences requires practical environments that can support both the live-action unit and extensive post-production. Little Schmidt Productions' contribution sits within the location and wider production-support layer of that process.
Finding environments large enough to disappear into Hollow Earth.
Natural locations need visual depth, controllable access and enough physical variety to support multiple fictional environments. Dense vegetation and dramatic terrain provide layers that production design and visual effects can extend without starting from an empty frame.
Monster scale creates human-scale complexity behind camera.
Large units, equipment, constructed set pieces and effects reference elements still have to move through ordinary production infrastructure. Location support helps connect the extraordinary scale visible on screen with practical access, scheduling and departmental requirements.
Stage and location must belong to the same world.
A Hollow Earth sequence may combine natural Queensland landscape, studio-built foreground elements and extensive digital extension. Production support helps provide environments that can connect convincingly across those different methods.
One production region can become several continents — and another world.
Queensland's visual diversity allowed rainforest, urban and studio environments to perform very different narrative jobs. The production process turns that geographic concentration into a screen world that appears vastly more dispersed.
Inside the Production
How do you film
for creatures this big?
The MonsterVerse depends on visual effects, but the live-action production still needs physical scale, texture and reference. The most interesting work happens where practical construction, landscapes, performers and digital Titans overlap.
The monsters may be digital, but the world around them works best when actors can touch it, cameras can move through it and light can actually fall across it.
A digital journey begins with a very heavy practical object.
The Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle was represented by a substantial practical build for live-action work. Physical vehicle elements gave the performers real entrances, surfaces and interiors to interact with while the surrounding flight and Titan geography could be extended digitally.
That approach preserves weight: when actors climb aboard or move through the cabin, their relationship with the machine does not have to be imagined entirely in post-production.
Long sections of the film depend on visual performance.
Kong's discovery of Suko and the ape civilisation plays with comparatively little human dialogue. Expression, gesture, eyelines, blocking and creature animation therefore carry information that another film might explain verbally.
Production VFX supervisor Alessandro Ongaro described much of the film as effectively a large silent movie, with character and story communicated through body language, expression, timing, framing and virtual cinematography. His production breakdown also details the scale of the fully CG work and the need to maintain consistent character performance across multiple VFX vendors.
The production must create enough environmental context around those performances for audiences to understand relationships, threat and humour without a human character narrating them.
Nature becomes the base layer of fantasy.
Real Queensland vegetation helps give Hollow Earth irregularity: leaves overlap, roots twist, surfaces are wet and natural light changes from one angle to another. Those imperfections are valuable because they prevent an effects-heavy environment from feeling mathematically clean.
The digital world can become impossible in scale while retaining recognisable natural behaviour in its foreground.
Kong's new weapon had to feel attached to an existing body.
Kong's mechanical gauntlet changes his silhouette and fighting style without turning him into a completely different character. Its design combines Monarch technology with a form large enough to read instantly when worn by a Titan.
Because Kong communicates physically, the glove is not merely a prop concept — it becomes part of his gesture, weight and combat performance.
Hollow Earth's strangest physics become an action environment.
The climactic Hollow Earth battle temporarily disrupts gravity, freeing the Titans from the weight that normally defines their movement. Animation, camera design and environmental debris can therefore create a fight with completely different spatial rules before gravity returns.
The sequence works because the film has spent so much time establishing how heavy these creatures normally feel.
A familiar city gives the finale a measuring stick.
When the Titan conflict reaches Rio, buildings, beachfront geometry and urban infrastructure allow audiences to judge scale immediately. Surfers Paradise contributed live-action production material that could be transformed and extended into the Brazilian setting.
After the unfamiliar geography of Hollow Earth, a recognisable human city makes the Titans appear enormous again.
The MonsterVerse Expands
The world below
becomes a civilisation.
Earlier MonsterVerse stories treated Hollow Earth primarily as a mystery of geography. The New Empire turns it into a place with societies, oppression, history and competing Titan relationships — opening narrative territory far beyond another surface-city confrontation.
Kong enters Hollow Earth looking for others like himself. What he finds is not simply a species — it is a society that needs to be freed.
The king finally finds a kingdom.
Kong's victory is not defined by defeating Godzilla or claiming human territory. By liberating the apes and forming a bond with Suko, he gains the community that his previous MonsterVerse appearances repeatedly denied him.
The surface guardian changes for the next scale of threat.
Godzilla actively seeks additional energy before confronting the Hollow Earth danger, resulting in a transformed appearance and demonstrating that even the MonsterVerse's established alpha can continue evolving.
A production relationship spanning multiple films.
Producer Eric McLeod described Queensland as a recurring favourite for the MonsterVerse because of its varied locations, studio facilities and experienced crews. The region had already supported Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla vs. Kong before the team returned for this film.
Kong carries the story. Godzilla changes it.
Our related editorial, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Finally Stopped Pretending Godzilla and Kong Were the Same Kind of Monster, looks at why the film works by giving Kong the emotional journey while allowing Godzilla to operate as a force of nature rather than forcing both Titans into the same narrative role.