With Greenland 2: Migration now available on Digital, we were able to sit down with director Ric Roman Waugh (Shot Caller; Angel Has Fallen) to break down his epic post-apocalyptic film, which brings back the Garrity family and sends them on an even more perilous globe-trotting journey.
After spending the first film following the Garritys as they attempt to reach a bunker to escape a global catastrophe, the sequel turns everything on its head as the family of three are now forced to flee their home again and find a rumored promised land. Waugh breaks down the ending for us as well as some of the biggest challenges during filming, including that tension-filled English Channel sequence. Plus, he talks about reuniting with Gerard Butler and a whole lot more!
The cast features Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, Gordon Alexander, Peter Polycarpou, William Abadie, Nelia Valery Da Costa, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Trond Fausa Aurvåg, Rachael Evelyn, Sidsel Siem Koch, Alex Lanipekun, Nathan Wiley, and Gísli Örn Garðarsson.
Greenland 2: Migration is now available on Digital from Lionsgate!
Watch our full chat below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: What was about this particular story and the original Greenland that made you want to revisit these characters five years later?
RIC: It's funny, because when I read the first script, I was like a heat seeking missile to direct it. It just really struck a chord with me, because it was really the epitome of the movies that I try to make. I try to make movies from the inside out. They're always personal stories, intimate stories, within a world, and, you know, my job on this one, I felt was like, oh my God, hopefully they believe this comet part of it, like the disaster part of it, because the human side of it was so beautifully written, of what we would go through, and then to be in post production, and suddenly realize a real tragedy is about to hit the entire world with Covid. We didn't know what the hell that was, and now you're releasing a disaster movie in the middle of a disaster itself, and the fact that it went number one around the world, and, you know, no theaters in the US, so you're going into a streaming deal, but HBO really backed it in a significant way. You really feel like you got the win, and it just took on legs that became endearing to a lot of people, and it's always been a story that I absolutely love. And every time I see it, you know, on TV, or I see a photo of it, I get a smile.
And we started talking about, possibly, do we do a sequel? But not a sequel, but a follow-up, like, what is the next chapter? And really, what's the evolution of we didn't pull any punches. We told you we were going to wreck the earth, and we did. And then, how would you rebuild from scratch and just play with that, and so we decided, once we figured out what we really wanted the story to be, and really about the evolution of the Garrity family, so that you could watch us like in two part chapters. It was really about following the exact same chronology. So, yeah, it did come out in 2020 and because this came out basically at the end of 2025, early 2026, we wanted to pick you up five years later in the Garrity story.
ROHAN: We spend the whole first movie following the Garritys as they try to reach the bunker, and then, within the first 20 minutes, the bunker is gone. What kind of journey did you want to send them on now?
RIC: It was always the story within a story that I loved about the first movie. It was about this family that was in crisis. And that was my favorite part of the way the script was written. In most of these movies, you know, you're meeting everybody, and they're perfectly fine, and everybody's shiny, and then, the world goes awry, and then they're dealing with it. And this one was more like us, right? I mean, when the pandemic hit, we were all dealing with our own shit. And I love that the Garritys were hanging on by a thread, you know, of still becoming a family in one house, and then, life or death hits them, and they go on this journey and find out what really matters, and they find forgiveness and they find atonement. It was really important that the second movie had the same thrust that it was also a family that is in crisis again. They refound their love, but we meet a father that is trying to pass his legacy on to the next generation in his son, trying to get them from a place of just surviving to living again, the way we did in the pandemic when we braved the New World, you know, of viruses and all the things that scared us, and also doing what was, I think, evident of every single species since the beginning of time to survive, which is migrate. So, we really wanted this feeling of journey, and also having a family have to deal with their own internal drama and things that are going on in their own arc, as well as the bigger notion of, how do you rebuild the earth, how do you start over and get back to living your life again?
ROHAN: You’ve worked with Gerard Butler several times, and clearly have a good working relationship with him. What is it like working with him, especially since he is so versatile as a performer and capable of doing anything you ask him to?
RIC: Gerry's not afraid to be vulnerable on camera and loves to play flawed characters because they represent us, you know, we went through that whole period of everybody’s heroes in movies were ten feet tall and bulletproof and impervious to pain, and they're not us. They felt cardboard, and I love that Gerry's not cardboard. Gerry allows himself to really be inserted in these types of sensitive stories that are dealing with all types of issues. Our first movie together, Angel Has Fallen, you know, we made Mike Banning a pill popping Secret Service agent trying to outlast his own mortality and paying the price of it, and, you know, here we meet him, playing a guy that's trying to get back in the house and ask for forgiveness, and we find out why, it was adultery, you know, things that you would never do with a hero. I love that he's confident that we can create empathy for these people and these heroes that, again, that we relate to and show them warts and all.
ROHAN: Roman Griffin Davis’ character Nathan has a larger role this time around, but we quickly see that he doesn’t remember much of the world before the bunker. How did you aim to establish his viewpoint and nail that emotional dynamic between father and son?
RIC: It was interesting because my sons - I have twins - were a little bit older than that, but I remember at that age range, and again, we wanted to chronologically follow the real world. So again, you're five years later, which means Nathan has been underground for half of his life, and so now he's in that weird state of a young adult. Where's my legacy? Is this the rest of my life like this? Even testing his own spirituality. I love that he was questioning all of these things that were from being a scared little boy and now to where is my place on Earth and what is my future and, you know, what is ahead of me? I love just using those basic fundamentals to kind of speak to a different generation of audience viewers, and also parents who are dealing with that same thing when they're trying to leave legacy for their kids, you know, that are about to enter into the next generation of adults?
ROHAN: The film contains many disaster moments, but the most intense sequence I thought was the rope bridge. What was the process behind shooting that stunt and was it the most challenging scene to shoot or was there something else?
RIC: I think the two most challenging sequences were definitely the earthquake and putting hundreds of real people on a beach that is in sub zero weather, let alone the water that is frigid, and dealing with real mother nature, real inclement weather, you know, there was a lot of safety factor and a lot of things that went into that. You're talking about hundreds of people in front of the camera and hundreds of people behind the camera. So, now you're talking about a thousand people that you're trying to take care of, and have them all go home at the end of the day being safe. There was a lot with that to achieve that type of realism, where it wasn't CG, it was all done real.
And then, the crossing of the English Channel was the other one, because you were going to have to create a virtual world that was new, right? That we're creating something that looks like a version of the Grand Canyon, but it was its own thing. But I love to shoot action for real. So, we literally built that to scale, where you had the English side, the center rocks were like a piece of land in the middle of no man's land, and then you had the French side. And we built that entire thing to scale, thirty feet off the ground, so that when the actors are up there, they're up there for real, and they're up there with real fear and real drama. So, people falling off the ropes, Nathan nearly falling off, and his parents having to grab him, we did all that live action. So, it was a really interesting sequence to shoot, where you're shooting stuff that is CG backgrounds and building out this world, but the action that you're looking at is 100% authentic.
ROHAN: The ending is very emotional, when did you know that was the right ending for John and the Garrity family after everything they’ve been through?
RIC: Yeah, it kind of organically took its place, because the first movie, again, was about a family in crisis, and then dealing with a world crisis, right? Real life or death. And we wanted that same thing. I mean, the Garritys have refound their love, and they're doing everything they can to be that family unit, trying to rebuild stuck underground. And then, we wanted to play with that ticking clock of a man paying the price for going out there and trying to help keep everybody alive, and dealing with his health in a detrimental way that is now created a faster ticking clock than he would like, of mortality, and only having so much time to not only get his family to a safer place, but also instill in his own son and his wife, the legacy of the way forward, and that rights of passage that we all want, as parents, I love that had a different kind of feel for that. And that again, the first movie, we didn't pull any punches, we told you we're going to wreck the earth, and we did, and we tell you about a man this time that is dealing with his own mortality, and we didn't want to pull any punches again. We wanted it to be real.
In the aftermath of a comet strike that decimated most of the earth, Greenland 2: Migration follows the Garrity family (Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, and Roman Griffin Davis) as they’re forced to leave the safety of their bunker in Greenland to traverse a shattered world in search of a new home.