Godzilla Minus Zero final trailer ends with a roar that isn't Godzilla's — fans say King Ghidorah, Toho won't confirm before the November 6 release date

The final trailer for Godzilla Minus Zero arrived on Toho's official Godzilla channel out of New York Comic Con, and its closing stretch is a very deliberate tease: houses lift into the air with people inside, gold lightning rakes down from above, a roar sounds that is not Godzilla's, and Godzilla falls. The monster responsible is never shown and never named. Fans — and most of the entertainment press — have answered for Toho: the yellow gravity-beam lightning and that shriek are the signature of King Ghidorah, the three-headed dragon and Godzilla's oldest archenemy. Toho's marketing has not confirmed it, and with this billed as the last trailer before release, it apparently won't.

The release math: Japan gets the film November 3 — Godzilla Day, the anniversary of the 1954 original and the same date Minus One opened in 2023 — with IMAX early-access screenings in North America that night and the wide US release on November 6 through GKIDS. Takashi Yamazaki returns as writer, director and VFX supervisor, the story picks up in 1949, two years after Minus One, and stays with the Shikishima family. The official synopsis commits to exactly one sentence of plot: "a new threat destroys hope with a single blow."

Don't miss: Clayface box office predictions are in, and James Gunn is defending the October 23 movie citing Casablanca

The secret that already screened

Here's the part that makes the coyness funny: Godzilla Minus Zero premiered at the New York Film Festival on September 26. Hundreds of people have seen the whole movie, first reactions called it a step up from Minus One, and detailed plot descriptions naming the second kaiju have been circulating since. The trailers are protecting a reveal that a festival audience unwrapped six weeks before release. Toho is betting, probably correctly, that the people who know are not the people the trailer is for.

The monster Toho won't name in its trailers has been in the film's public plot summaries since September.

The rest of the sequel's credentials have been stacking up on their own:

• The rating: the first R-rated Godzilla film in the franchise's 72 years, after Minus One's PG-13.
• The format: the first Japanese production ever certified "Filmed for IMAX," with the trailer itself released in the 1.43:1 IMAX ratio.
• The bar: Minus One won the visual effects Oscar — the franchise's first Academy Award — off a reported budget under $15 million.

Whatever is at the other end of that roar, Yamazaki has earned the benefit of the doubt, and the November 6 date means the answer is three and a half weeks out.

Previously we wrote: Dragon Ball Super: Beerus release date and episodes: the shortest Dragon Ball series ever lands on Crunchyroll and Netflix — on two different schedules