Movies that deal with the end of the world tend to carry hefty budget, so no offense intended to anyone involved, but hopes weren’t exactly high that Greenland was going to either figuratively and literally set the world alight.
After all, the prospect of B-tier titan Gerard Butler re-teaming with Angel Has Fallen director Ric Roman Waugh for an apocalyptic adventure that carried a modest (by the standards of the subgenre) $35 million budget didn’t exactly hint that greatness was on the cards, which is precisely what made it such a pleasant surprise.
Despite releasing at the worst possible time after hitting international theaters in the summer of 2020, Greenland became one of the very few features to recoup its production costs at the box office before becoming nothing short of a sensation after being made available on streaming, all while a 78 percent Rotten Tomatoes score enshrined it as one of Butler’s best-reviewed vehicles ever.
There’s even a sequel on the way, one that was acquired for the princely sum of $75 million, so it’s clear somebody sees plenty of potential in the would-be franchise. On a story level it’s fairly standard stuff that finds a man desperately trying to steer his family to safety as a looming threat promising to extinguish all of humanity looms large.
It’s all in the execution, though, and that’s something Greenland pulls off with plenty of style to spare as evidenced by FlixPatrol revealing its latest on-demand resurgence, underlining that you don’t need an Armageddon-sized budget to play – and beat – Michael Bay at his own explosive game.