Kong: Skull Island's Godzilla Connection Revealed

02/18/2017 12:26 pm EST

Kong: Skull Island is the much-anticipated reboot of the King Kong franchise, and the first Skull Island trailer was a wonderfully ominous tease of a horror-themed adventure to come in the full film.

Apart from an exciting-looking standalone film experience, Kong: Skull Island has the added appeal of being the first chapter in a shared universe that will connect with the rebooted Godzilla and its sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That shared universe will then culminate in a King Kong vs. Godzilla mashup film, coming in 2020.

As such, there are going to be some connective threads established between the two giant monster franchises - now we have the first idea of how Kong: Skull Island connects to Godzilla.

Cinemablend visited the set of Skull Island, and learned from producer Alex Garcia that the film is actually set before the events of the 2014 Godzilla reboot: "Godzilla is not emerged into the modern world...so this is very much just Kong's story."

In terms of direct connections between the two, Garcia revealed that John Goodman's character Bill Randa will be a shady operative from Monarch, that government organization in Godzilla who knew more about the monster than they let on. In Skull Island, we'll get to see how Monarch first learns of the world's giant monster problem: "John Goodman, who plays the guy from Monarch, is sort of pulling the strings in the background and we come to realize obviously that they knew much more than they let on initially."

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Kong: Skull Island hits theaters on March 10, 2017. Godzilla 2 is scheduled for March 22, 2018. MonsterVerse is slated for May 29, 2020.