INTO THE MONSTER VERSE
MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS brings beloved oversized killing machines such as Godzilla and King Kong to the small screen opposite fatherand-son duo KURT and WYATT RUSSELL, who play the same character at different ages.
The plot specifics of this new 10-episode series are practically top secret, but it’s a spinoff of the Godzilla and Kong movies, which returned to the big screen in 2014.
The Monarch of the title refers to the semi-secret monster-monitoring organisation and the Russells play ex-army turned Monarch military man Lee Shaw.
Set in a ruined San Francisco in the aftermath of the 2014 battle between Godzilla and the Titans and the revelation that yes, monsters are real. The story jumps between the 1950s and the present, as two siblings (Ren Watabe and Kiersey Clemons) attempt to uncover their family’s connection to Monarch.
Showrunner and executive producer Chris Black says Monarch won’t be wall-to-wall monster smackdowns.
“The focus was always on, ‘what’s the human story we want to tell?’. It’s about this family and a multi-generational family saga. And we were lucky enough to get Kurt and Wyatt to come in and play a character that spans generations and links these two stories together.
“But I don’t want to make it sound like the monsters weren’t important because they are certainly an absolutely critical and fun part of what this world is.”
The Russells, he said, liked the idea of playing the same character.
“They were really intrigued by playing this idea. They’d been offered roles before, playing father and son. That wasn’t that exciting. But the idea of ‘no, you’re the same character in different time periods’ was something that they’d never been presented with before that they were excited about.”