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Mayor Ebert and his assistant Gene are a parody of the TV film critic duo Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. This was in response to their negative reviews of Emmerich and Devlin's earlier films Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996). The film also co-opted their trademark Thumbs up/Thumbs down method of rating films by depicting Mayor Ebert's campaign as "Thumbs Up for New York!" and Gene giving Ebert a thumbs down at the end of the film when he finally decides he has had enough of his abuse and quits. When the real Siskel and Ebert reviewed the film on their show, they gave it two thumbs down and Siskel said the filmmakers spoofing them was "petty" and said "If you're going to go through the trouble of putting us in a monster movie, why don't you at least take advantage of having the monster either eat or squash us". The duo would later name the film as one of their worst films of 1998. And in Ebert's print review in The Chicago Sun Times, he wrote "They let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla." Although he called Michael Lerner's performance as Mayor Ebert "gamely played".
This movie features more Simpson voice actors than any other project besides The Simpsons (1989) itself: Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer and Nancy Cartwright. When the Simpsons later did a Godzilla parody called Homerzilla, they referenced that "Homerzilla" received a Hollywood remake that failed, a jab at this movie. The episode ends stating that Homerzilla will one day return just as soon as that "Zilla" film is forgotten.
Steven Spielberg tried to talk Emmerich out of making the film considering it a silly idea for Hollywood to try and remake Godzilla. Spielberg later told Entertainment Weekly that he didn't bother to see the film stating, "The only Godzilla I saw was the one with Raymond Burr. I purposely stayed away from seeing [TriStar's] Godzilla because I didn't want to get anything between me and my memory of my favorite Godzilla movie of all time."
Producer Dean Devlin claimed that, because TriStar was very secretive about the actual design of Godzilla, the studio created unique fake designs and sent them to different merchandise manufacturers, which was done to test whether the companies could be trusted or not. After Fruit of the Loom leaked images of Godzilla on the internet in November of 1997, they lost their license to sell any Godzilla-related apparel. Devlin also claimed that the mold maker who was hired accidentally based the Godzilla design on one of those fakes. When the mold maker found out about that, he destroyed the designs, but forgot to destroy the mold as well, which was then discovered and taken pictures from. However, when the official design was eventually revealed, it turned out to be essentially the same design as the alleged "fake leak".
In a television interview, Matthew Broderick said that the entire cast were given wet suits to wear underneath their costumes while filming in Hawaii. He was upset because his wet suit zipped up in the back, which made it difficult to put on every day. One day during a break in filming, he was talking with co-star Hank Azaria, who had his shirt off, revealing a wet suit that zipped up in front. Broderick remarked, "Oh, your wet suit zips up in front." Puzzled, Azaria replied, "They *all* zip up in front." Broderick had been putting his wet suit on backwards every day.
Despite the less-than-expected box office performance, this film still made more money worldwide than any other American movie based on a foreign film. It held this record until Godzilla (2014) claimed it 16 years later.