The migration failed at the box office

January tends to be a slow month at the box office, but there’s always room for the good movie to slip in and become a sneaky hit. This worked quite well for “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” in January 2024 for example. Unfortunately for STX, it didn’t work out for “Greenland 2: Migration,” which stood out as 2026’s first major failure.

The sequel to the 2020 disaster film “Greenland” opened to $8.5 million domestically last weekend, which was just enough for fifth place on the chart. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” ($21.3 million) retained the top spot for the fourth consecutive weekend, with killer chimpanzee thriller “Primate” ($11.3 million) coming in at number two, performing best among the weekend’s newcomers. The good news is that Lionsgate only paid $10 million for the domestic rights, which means they’ll be in good shape. Now for the bad news.

Directed by Ric Roman Waugh, “Migration” cost $90 million. So even though STX sold various distribution rights around the world to help cover costs, this is a terrible opening for a film with a blockbuster budget. It now depends entirely on massive participation from abroad, which seems unlikely. It’s a fiasco. STX, a financially unstable company in recent yearscannot afford such failures.

So what went wrong here? How could STX make such a serious miscalculation with this one? We’re going to look at the main reasons why “Greenland 2” blew up at the box office on opening weekend. Let’s go.

When “Greenland” arrived in 2020, it surprised many viewers. Not just the run-of-the-mill disaster movie, it aimed for something more grounded and heartbreaking. So there was some potential for buy-in to the sequel. Unfortunately, critics and audiences have generally been a little lenient about Waugh’s follow-up.

“Migration” enjoys a 58% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, as of this writing. This comes with a barely better audience score of 65%. These numbers aren’t the ones that typically accompany the kind of big-budget movie that will get people off the couch these days. The first film, on the other hand, has a 78% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The sequel also features a not-so-good B-CinemaScore which, again, is bad for a blockbuster. A film this expensive needs to reach the widest possible audience in theaters and cannot suffer the fate of “waiting to release.”

The sequel picks up in the wake of a comet strike that decimated most of the Earth and follows the Garrity family (Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin and Roman Griffin Davis) as they are forced to leave the safety of their bunker in Greenland. They must now navigate the rubble of the old world in search of a new home.

Chris Evangelista, in his review of “Greenland 2” for /Filmcalled it “an effective sequel” that “never overstays its welcome.” Despite this, few critics were charmed by the film into giving it that inescapable buzz, which is a problem when it costs so much to make.

Simply put, no matter how the rights were sold, no matter who might make it financially in certain territories with this film, $90 million was way too much to spend on “Greenland 2.” A sequel seemed warranted, but not at this price. The first film cost $35 million and grossed $52.3 million at the international box office in 2020, while movie theaters have closed across much of the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was released on VOD in North America, with STX also able to sign a lucrative streaming deal with HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video.

With a better cinema landscape and a January release with less competition, there was a chance that this film would find its audience. But going from $35 million to $90 million here was a nail in the coffin. Expensive disaster films, historically speaking, have always been a risky bet. For every “The Day After Tomorrow” ($555 million worldwide), there is at least one “The Core” ($73 million worldwide). We could also look “Moonfall”, which was literally one of the biggest flops of 2022 with just $67 million worldwide against a whopping $140 million budget.

“Migration” is expected to gross at least $225 million worldwide, or 2.5 times its production budget, before it can even be considered a theatrical success, before other revenue streams are taken into account. At this rate, making up the difference in VOD/streaming promises to be difficult, even if the international audience is present. Mathematics just isn’t mathematics, so to speak.

Part of what can make a January release effective for the right film is the lack of direct competition, as studios tend to favor other months, particularly the summer season, for major releases. But without any real buzz around “Greenland 2”, the competition available to us looked very high, creating a situation where this film was far from being the first choice of moviegoers.

James Cameron’s ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ has grossed well over $1 billion so farmuch of this money coming from abroad. It is currently the blockbuster of choice for potential ticket buyers. “Primate” has won over horror crowds, while Paul Feig’s thriller “The Housemaid” has become an unexpected success, currently approaching $200 million worldwide. Even Sony’s “Anaconda” reboot grossed $110 million worldwide, and is holding up well from week to week.

Not to mention Disney’s family juggernaut, “Zootopia 2,” which is fast becoming one of the biggest films of all time. When you count Oscar contenders like “Marty Supreme” and “Is This Thing On?” Additionally, the picture becomes clearer. A middling disaster movie fights an uphill battle when there are so many other choices on the market right now.

There was a time when it seemed like Gerard Butler might be the next big movie star. Like a movie star-level Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, back when “300” became a hit in 2007. But that was a long time ago, and while Butler still works steadily and finds himself on the good side of modest successes like “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” from time to time, it’s been clear for some time that he’s not the kind of actor who can carry a blockbuster on his shoulders.

Butler, in fairness, was part of a huge hit last year in “How to Train Your Dragon” ($636 million worldwide), but that was in an ensemble that was already part of a beloved franchise with blockbuster appeal. Most of the actor’s hits are in the mid-budget range, like “Olympus Has Fallen” or “Law Abiding Citizen.” Often, when he enters the big-budget arena, things go badly. Consider the massive fiasco of “Geostorm” ($223 million worldwide/$120 million budget). or the disaster that was the “Gods of Egypt”.

“Greenland” really suited Butler’s strengths as a movie star. A sequel could have also been made if they had managed to keep it within the same budget range. Unfortunately, as a blockbuster, it never made sense. With all due respect, Gerard Butler is not Tom Cruise. This is not the area in which he operates best, commercially speaking.

In the modern era, it’s harder than ever to get people to show up to the cinema and buy a movie ticket. Domestic box office still far from reaching pre-pandemic levelswith no sign of that changing any time soon. In the case of “Greenland 2,” looking specifically at the domestic picture but also assuming that the vast majority of people around the world saw the first one at home, trying to turn a VOD release into a movie franchise is exceptionally difficult. This is a big ask.

The fact is that streaming content was devalued even once by powerful brands like Marvel and Pixar. People already want to stay home and stream content. It is therefore important to take into account that audiences largely came to know “Greenland” as something they could enjoy from the comfort of their homes – not as something they had to see in a theater. It is difficult to reverse the trend. This is definitely something that threatens this sequel’s opening weekend.

Even in the case of the “Trolls” franchise, “Trolls World Tour” started the premium VOD trend in 2020. Universal decided to put “Trolls Band Together” in theaters in 2023 and it did well, with the film grossing $210 million worldwide, but that was a far cry from the first “Trolls,” which grossed $342 million before the pandemic. The numbers and data aren’t really there. Once people expect something to be a home movie, they’re unlikely to get off the couch.

“Greenland 2: Migration” is currently in theaters.