Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is a bold project to be sure. Spanning decades, continents, and a large cast of characters (when they were young and when they were old), the series explores the history of a clandestine organization known as Monarch, which fans of the MonsterVerse will be familiar with. After the massive success of films like Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. began assembling a spectacular cinematic universe of Toho’s monsters and more, which is now tied together by the wide-ranging new Apple TV+ series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

The series is created and run by Chris Black (Severance, Star Trek: Enterprise) and Matt Fraction (an iconic comic book writer and consulting producer on Hawkeye). The creative pair spoke with MovieWeb about their monster-sized show.

Creating a Multigenerational Legacy of Monsters
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Release Date November 17, 2023 Cast Christopher Heyerdahl, Mari Yamamoto, Qyoko Kudo, Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell Main Genre Action Genres Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi Seasons 1
MovieWeb: This TV series is such an interesting way to tie together loose ends and expand on the lore of the MonsterVerse and Monarch itself. Did Legendary Pictures sort of approach you and tell you what narrative elements you needed to organize in order for it to belong in and extend the MonsterVerse?

Matt Fraction: I think it’s the other way around. I think what we ideated was a show set in the MonsterVerse that worked as a television show, that wasn’t a scaled-down, compromised, weekly monster mash-them-up or monster hunt. We wanted to take advantage of the medium of television as a storytelling engine to make a show about real people that we cared about and wanted to learn about, wanted to spend time with, in this bigger-than-big, crazy, awful, amazing world.

Chris Black: Yeah, and I think to Legendary’s credit, they were like, ‘We know we want to do this. We have this incredibly valuable franchise. We would love to expand it into the television sphere, but it’s got to be great. What we don’t want is the cheap TV version of our movies.’ You know, the bar is set high, and I think one of the reasons I love working with Legendary is, they really are very creative and friendly, and they’re like, ‘It’s your job to tell us what the great version of this is. That’s why we hire creatives and writers,’ and they were very collaborative and supportive.

And I was coming and saying, ‘We want to tell a story about this family. We want to tell a multigenerational saga about the formation of Monarch and how the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. That story is the spine of a 10-episode television show and, oh, by the way, as they go on this adventure, searching for their father, the monsters keep getting in the way.’

Chris Black: And they were like, ‘That sounds like a show to us.’

Matt Fraction: As writers, it was the people; as fans, it was the world.

Related: The Warner Bros. MonsterVerse Movies, Ranked

Chris Black and Matt Fraction Connect the MonsterVerse

MW: There is a lot of background to draw from, not just from the other MonsterVerse films, but from 70 years of Godzilla. What was your approach to making Monarch: Legacy of Monsters?

Matt Fraction: The canonical Legendary films, the MonsterVerse films, were kind of our guide posts. And there are big gaps in that timeline from a few shots in the opening credits of Godzilla 2014 to the opening of Kong: Skull Island. There’s been a spectacular fall. And then from the opening of 2014, where they are a mysterious, mythical, whispered-about, fringe science operation, to King of the Monsters 2019, when they are global protectors. They’re being called out in front of the Senate, in front of committees and all this stuff.

So there were just big question marks — what was Monarch’s arc? How did Monarch start? How did it get to this? How did the largest nuclear test the United States military ever executed, how was that done at the behest of Monarch? And then how did that lead, 15 years later, to John Goodman, hat-in-hand, begging for a ride on a helicopter?

Matt Fraction: So you know, there was enough questions and blanks and mysteriousness that it felt like, ‘Oh, this is really rich. We can really build up this world by exploring that well.’

Chris Black: And that’s what TV is. It’s not that the movies had done anything wrong, or that there was anything missing, it’s just television is different. It’s like you’re telling a 10-hour mythology, versus a two-hour, two and a half hour movie. And suddenly you have the real estate to tell those stories and let them breathe and introduce new characters and have them evolve and have it go over generations. And it wasn’t so much like, ‘Oh, they didn’t do this.’ It was like, ‘They didn’t do it because they were making movies, but we can do it because we’re making a TV show.’

Matt Fraction: Part of the reason we wanted to set it right after 2014 — it was no longer about, ‘Is this real?’ It’s a Godzilla movie. You know Godzilla is real, it’s why you go see the Godzilla movie. If the guys running around Godzilla, not believing it’s happening, it’s kind of a drag. So setting it right after that, like, the whole world has changed. What does that look like?

RELATED: Matt Shakman on Directing Godzilla in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

What Godzilla Means Today

MW: Godzilla used to be this significant symbol for the atom bomb and nuclear warfare, which are, of course, still issues. But you use the monsters in more character-focused and psychological ways here. What does Godzilla represent to you now and in this show?

Chris Black: Godzilla and the kaiju of the MonsterVerse have always been sort of existential allegories for whatever the threat is. Coming out of post-war Japan, when we first see Godzilla in the early ’50s, and then you get into the ’60s and ’70s, and they are sometimes about ecological disaster or environmental degradation. And then, if you’re looking at our modern age, I think you could pick. Obviously climate change and global warming is a very real and current issue. And we were producing this show in the middle of a global pandemic. So I mean, it wasn’t something we made up. It was happening as we were working on the show. But I think the other thing about Godzilla is he represents personal demons for our characters as well. We always talk about in the pilot episode, what you discover at the end of the pilot is Kate’s monster isn’t Godzilla; Kate’s monster is her father.

Matt Fraction: Godzilla destroyed her city, and [her father] Hiroshi kind of destroys her life. And that’s a terrible secret that comes to light at the worst possible time. And that’s just compelling drama. But to me, it’s about crippling student loan debt [laughs]. You can project onto it, that’s the beauty — you can project whatever terrifies you.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters premiered globally on Friday, November 17, followed by one episode every Friday through January 12 on Apple TV+.

Stream on Apple TV+