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SYFY WIRE Greenland

It's the end of the world as Gerard Butler knows it in new comet disaster flick Greenland

By Jacob Oller
Greenland hed

An extinction level event? In this economy? The minds behind Greenland, the upcoming comet disaster film about to impact with Gerard Butler, might be feeling a little strange about the timing of this devestating attack on planet Earth — especially considering that movie theaters wouldn't have even been able to show it earlier this summer.

The STX Films production from stuntman/director Ric Roman Waugh (Angel Has Fallen), sees Butler's rugged father figure under fire not from terrorists or even a Geostorm, but a comet named Clarke. Clarke breaks up and its chunks lay waste to the world — of course aiming first for Florida. Sorry, Sunshine State.

Take a look:

The predictions were wrong, the government seems to have been impeding rather than helping — and "planet killers," huh? Sounds about right. Morena Baccarin, Scott Glenn, Andrew Bachelor, and David Denman join Butler as they all try to avoid getting blown up by space rocks and the Purge-esque aftermath when society falls apart.

The best chance of survival seems like some bunkers in Greenland, and thus the race is on. Butler's military man will have to protect his family, that's a given, but what's going on with everyone unexpectedly storming the Greenland base where the bunkers are? How did all those people even GET to Greenland? Looks like a classic B-movie plot — courtesy of writers Chris Sparling and Mitchell LaFortune — with plenty of goofball antics for everyone to survive.

Just look at the poster:

Greenland poster

Speaking to EW, Waugh explained the relevance his film has to present-day - even if the world isn't particularly under threat by interstellar rocks. "The irony of what is happening is we made this movie last year, like there was no such thing as COVID when we filmed this movie, there wasn't the strife that is in the world that we're dealing with today, that is really about life and death and massive change," the director said. "So there was this interesting kind of dichotomy to the material for me."

"I remember Gerry [Butler], [producer] Basil Iwanyk, and I were talking about how that is the hard part to ground because it kind of feels a bit far-fetched. Like, would society collapse like this? Would these things happen?" asked Waugh. "And then the movie was completely edited, we had previewed it, we had already tested really well, all this happened before COVID, and then suddenly we're in the finishing stages and I'm watching the movie, and I'm like, 'I can't believe it, all of this came true.' And suddenly what used to feel like far-fetched or fictional suddenly became way more relevant than we'd ever thought."

Greenland is still scheduled to drop in theaters on Aug. 14 (pushed back from a June release).