Exclusive: Morena Baccarin offers a promising update on her Greenland 2 return 3 years after the Gerard Butler disaster movie became a sleeper hit.
Two years after the sequel was first announced, Morena Baccarin has a promising update on her Greenland: Migration return. The 2020 disaster thriller centered on Gerard Butler’s John Garrity and his family as they race across the country to reach an emergency shelter in the eponymous country as a comet is expected to cause an extinction-level event on impacting with Earth. Helmed by frequent Butler collaborator Ric Roman Waugh, the movie proved to be a surprise success on release, grossing over $52 million worldwide despite releasing in the middle of COVID lockdown and garnering largely positive reviews from critics, landing a sequel order the following year.
During a recent interview with Screen Rant for the crime-thriller Fast Charlie, Baccarin was asked for an update on her potential Greenland: Migration return. The Emmy nominee had a promising update for the disaster movie sequel, confirming that she was currently in “the midst of negotiations”, and expressed her hopes to return. Check out what Baccarin shared below:
How Greenland 2 Can Be Bigger (& Better) Than The First
With the disaster movie genre having largely floundered in recent years, Greenland’s success largely came for its approach to its story feeling like a breath of fresh air. Rather than relying on multiple disaster sequences akin to Roland Emmerich’s filmography or try to establish some convoluted plan to save the world from the comet like Michael Bay’s Armageddon, the Butler movie instead kept its focus squarely on its human characters at the heart of its story. More than just the central family, the thriller explored how mass panic can lead to drastic measures being taken in the hopes of survival.
While it looks to be nearing its production start, the early discussions of Migration finding Butler and Baccarin’s characters venturing across a now frozen European wasteland to find a new home seems to promise the Greenland sequel could be bigger and better than its predecessor. The post-apocalypse genre remains a popular one on the big and small screens, though how they choose to tackle it has varied, ranging from the more dramatic The Last of Us to the action-driven Twisted Metal. Waugh previously teased to Screen Rant that the approach for the sequel will be closer to the former, including exploring how those who survived the event are still living in the post-extinction event:
“What I love about the way we’re going to do Greenland is the first movie was all up to the extinction event. The second movie will be what happened afterwards. Who survived, and how do they keep going when all the resources were depleted, and the world put in disarray? So, it’s going to be a great exploration in our own kind of creative way of going, “What happened when the dinosaurs were extinct? What happened in our extinction period, and what happened to the Earth and humanity after?””
By putting its characters in a frozen European wasteland, the door is open for Greenland: Migration to feature larger-scale set pieces, particularly as early reports put its budget at $65 million, a full $30 million more than its predecessor. But more than action sequences, the key to the sequel’s success will be how it continues to focus on its grounded human characters and their struggles to survive in a terrifying new world. With the recent SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes now ended, one can hope that production takes off sooner than later on Greenland: Migration and recapture the success of the original.