The Gerard Butler–starring sequel “Greenland: Migration,” out this weekend, only made $900K in previews last night. What’s far more worrisome, however, is how much the damn thing cost.
It seems, according to Variety, that the budget for “Greenland: Migration” was $90M+, which begs the question: why? How can such a high-risk sequel cost that much money? Sure, the first film, released during COVID, was a modest hit, earning $52M against a $35M budget, but there’s zero justification for the sequel costing 2.5x more than the original.
Even worse, at the last minute, the Canadian release of “Greenland: Migration,” which was expected to account for around 10% of the film’s overall North American receipts, got canceled, and is now going straight to streaming later this year. This included prime locations in Toronto, not to mention Vancouver and Montreal — the latter of which is home to one of the 10 most profitable theaters in North America.
“Greenland: Migration” stars Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, along with Amber Rose Revah, Sophie Thompson, and William Abadie. The sequel deals with the aftermath of a comet strike that decimated most of the planet, and now has the Garrity family leaving the safety of their Greenland bunker to traverse a shattered world in search of a new home.
As of today, reviews have been mixed — 57%·Rotten Tomatoes and 48 on Metacritic on Metacritic. For comparison, the original Greenland (2020) earned a 77% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 64 on Metacritic.
Meanwhile, even Paramount’s face-destroying chimp movie, “Primate,” rang up better receipts than “Greenland,” earning $1.4M in previews. The Johannes Roberts–directed animal-gone-wild flick opens today in 2,964 locations. Internationally, the film opens this week in 26 markets, including Mexico.
I’ll have the “Avatar: Fire and Ash” number very soon, and that one appears to have dropped significantly. More to come …