It has been a little more than five years since Greenland hit the big screen and defied the odds by becoming a sizable hit despite being a disaster movie released in the middle of a pandemic. The riveting end-of-the-world thriller following Gerard Butler’s John Garrity and family as they attempt to reach an underground bunker has a new sequel Greenland 2: Migration on the way, and its director is still amazed people came out the first time around.
Ahead of Greenland 2: Migration’s debut on the 2026 movie schedule, I caught up with director Ric Roman Waugh and asked him what was going through his head five years ago when he had to release a disaster movie in the middle of the biggest public health crisis in a century: the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m not going to lie, his first response caught me off guard:
I was scared shitless.
Making Greenland before the pandemic forever changed life as we know it, Waugh was worried about audiences buying into a more grounded and less sensationalized disaster movie about a family trying to survive. However, he had a new worry when COVID broke out months before the film’s release:
And then suddenly, another disaster hits like COVID, and you're like, ‘Who the hell is gonna want to see a disaster movie in the middle of a disaster?’ And yet, it became a worldwide phenomenon, and it really was a great and liberating feeling that it's human stories that connect us, you know, and that the emotional run of this family was what really carried it forth. It didn’t matter what the monster was because we live vicariously through the Garritys.
Greenland would go on to be a hit with critics and audiences during the pandemic, bringing in $52.3 million on the international market, per Box Office Mojo, despite never showing on the big screen here in the States. However, IndieWire reported back in early 2021 that the movie made around $32 million from PVOD rentals.
It will be a different story for Greenland 2: Migration, as the highly anticipated action drama will be showing on screens around the world, including here in America. The movie follows the Garrity family (played by Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, and Roman Griffin Davis) as they attempt to leave the bunker they fought so hard to reach five years ago in search of a better tomorrow.
When teasing the sequel, Waugh explained that this focus on the Garrity family throughout the first film will continue here, as will the human aspect of the disaster film genre:
That it was about continuing that story of the Garrity's and understanding that it's all about hope, right? How do we rebuild the earth, and how do we carry forward when we'd have to start from scratch again?
And the Garrity family does just that in Greenland 2: Migration. Without giving too much away, the family, which is tighter than ever before, sets off into a dangerous and unknown world in search of a better life and a new tomorrow. Will they find it? You’ll have to wait and see.
Greenland 2: Migration opens in theaters this weekend, but you can go back and watch the first film with an HBO Max subscription, where it is currently one of the most popular movies.
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