Aaaaaaand here I am.
They actually announced this back at Comic Con, with a surprise teaser trailer at the end of the
Pacific Rim panel, and had a brief Q&A with the director Gareth Edwards. Unfortunately I can't find the teaser anywhere, but here's the Q&A:
As well as a little concept art to show us what the new re-designed Godzilla looks like:
And, as far as I can tell, the only decent leaked screenshot from the teaser:
So anyway, about the movie itself. Gareth Edwards did a 'serious' monster movie in 2010 called
Monsters. It's a pretty good flick, focusing more on the human drama and the social-political climate that would rise from something as insane as a giant monster invasion (not to mention it was a pretty heavy-handed metaphor for America's fearful or willingly ignorant attitude towards the drug war in Mexico). It's not something that'll blow you away, but it's good for what it is.
Now that he's taking the reins over the King of the Monsters himself, though......I'm cautiously optimistic. I mean, we've got a guy who clearly wants to make really good monster movies, and now he's being backed by a studio with a much bigger budget than he had for
Monsters, which should allow him to do a lot more.
From what I've gathered, they're playing it closer to the original 1954 movie, where Godzilla is clearly the villain, an engine of nihilistic destruction and hate rather than the goofy children's hero he later became. I'm down with that, especially because it will put a much more definite distinction between this movie and
Pacific Rim, which sounds like it's going to be much more about the campy monster-robot fights. If they're ever going to be able to make the monster movie function as a legitimate form of horror movie again, then hopefully this is the movie to do it.