GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE had the Kaiju Phosphera planned for the film, just in case

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire had a great weekend at the box office in its opening weekend. Audiences certainly flocked to theaters to see this film on the big screen.

The film saw Godzilla and Kong team up to take down another giant creature called the Skay King, who was trying to devastate the human world, just like Godzilla and Kong have done in the past. There were a few other monsters in the mix too.

If you haven’t seen the film yet there are some spoilers ahead. In case one of the main monsters they wanted to include in the mix wasn’t available, the creative team had a backup plan.

In the third act of the film Mothra, who was thought to have been killed Godzilla: King of the Monsters, awakens and helps Godzilla and Kong team up to defeat Skay King. But if they couldn’t put Mothra in the movie, director Adam Wingard he had another creature lined up.

During an interview with The Wrap, Wingard said, “There was briefly another character called Phosphera that we had in place of Mothra. But Mothra was always what the character was written around.”

He added: “And there’s this false narrative online that this other character put a lot of pressure on it, and then we thought, ‘Let’s get Mothra.’ The plan was always Mothra. But we weren’t sure we could capture Mothra. And once we tested the film, we had the previous version of it, and then things were clear and we could shoot Mothra.”

Wingard went on to explain, “It would have been really stupid not to do Mothra because if you look at this other creature, she did and said everything the way Mothra does things, but it would have been another creature. It would have been very disappointing if, at the in the end, we couldn’t achieve that goal. I don’t like that some people think that this wasn’t the plan all along. If you look at the very first draft of the script, it always says Mothra.”

You can see Phosphera in the film in the form of a carved wall inside the Iwi temple in the Hollow Earth. The name Phosphera comes from the Greek Phōsphoros, meaning “light-bearer”.

In the film, “The Epic Battle Continues! Legendary Pictures’ Monsterverse film follows the explosive clash of Godzilla vs. Kong with an all-new adventure that pits the all-powerful Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal unknown threat hidden in our world, which puts their very existence… and ours to the test. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire delves further into the stories of these Titans and their origins, as well as the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond, uncovering the mythical battle that helped forge these extraordinary beings and forever bind them to humanity.

The film is the protagonist Rebecca Sala (Godzilla vs. Kong), Brian Tyree Henry (Godzilla vs. Kong), Dan Stevens (Legion), Kaylee Hottle (Godzilla vs. Kong), Alex Felci (The Batman) AND Fala Chen (Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings).