“I do want there to be a winner,” the filmmaker told EW on Friday, during a visit to New York. “The original film (1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla) was very fun, but you feel a little let down that the movie doesn’t take a definitive stance. People are still debating now who won in that original movie, you know. So, I do want people to walk away from this film feeling like, Okay, there is a winner.”

Wingard also spoke about his recent visit to the Atlanta set of filmmaker Michael Doughterty’s move Godzilla: King of the Monsters. “It was really cool,” said the director. “Part of me just wanted to go there and see what a $200 million — or whatever it’s costing — movie liked like. And I was kind of relieved to see that, at a certain point, movies can only get so big. That’s kind of what I got from it. It was really educational, just from that perspective. Mike was really nice. I’d never met him before. I walked up to him on set and he was taking pictures of one of the props or something, and he was laughing with somebody, and I was like, ‘Oh, this was really encouraging, to see that you’re smiling and looking happy!’ Because he was halfway through that production, so he could have been in horrible shape.”