King Kong vs. Godzilla was the third film of both respective franchises, and the first time each of these storied film monsters appeared in color. The brainchild for the film came from the stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien in 1960 when he proposed a film pitting King Kong against Frankenstein’s monster. O’Brien gave the script to producer Jack Beck for development. But unbeknownst to O’Brien, Beck gave the project to Toho Studios in Japan who replaced Frankenstein’s monster with Godzilla—much to O’Brien’s chagrin, as he had never been consulted on the change. Shinichi Sekizawa, the author of the 1961 classic, Mothra, was charged with composing the script, and on its release in 1962, the film became the second highest grossing film in Japanese film history—prompting Toho to continue the Godzilla franchise after seven years of dormancy. As with previous Godzilla films, the film was heavily re-edited into an “Americanized” version for release in the United States in 1963. The next release from Toho the following year would be Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) with Sekizawa in charge of the script once again.