Former stuntman turned filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh has quickly made a name for himself as a director. Waugh began his directing career with numerous films based around the penal system, including 2008’s Kilmer & Dorff-led prison drama “Felon,” 2013’s Dwayne Johnson vehicle “Snitch” and 2017’s “Shot Caller”.
That led to team-ups with Gerard Butler first on “Angel Has Fallen”, then the well-received “Greenland,” and more recently, the just released “Kandahar”.
Waugh is now linked to two action sequels in the works – a follow-up to “Greenland” and a sequel to Renny Harlin’s iconic Stallone-led mountain climbing thriller “Cliffhanger”. Speaking with Collider recently, he spoke about the stories of both films and how they are going to work.
First up, “Greenland: Migration” will be set 5-7 years after the first film’s ending. As it’s not a post-nuclear scenario, the survivors are able to return to the surface after a few years – even so, it will be enough to have an impact:
“It’s 5 to 7 years later. It’s enough that, which was very true about the last extinction event, was that there was so much toxicity in the atmosphere that nobody could live above ground for quite a while. There were still fires, and there’s all kinds of stuff going on, ash, you couldn’t breathe.
So we went by science and allowed a number of years to go by to where you realize that these people have been imprisoned underground. What does that do to the human psyche? How does that contribute to when you do go into a migration mode, and you’re trying to find new places to survive, and you have all of that trauma?
A little boy that was eight years old, or seven years old, that’s now 13 or 14, what is his life as a teenager when he’s known nothing else but cement walls and underground? These are the things that we want to play with. So we feel like time underground, it’s factual of what happened, but also it helps us with the story.”
He adds that work will begin on a “Greenland” sequel well before a fourth ‘Has Fallen’ film, likely to be titled “Night Has Fallen,” which has been discussed, but it doesn’t appear to have gone further than that.
Meanwhile, he’s adamant to the same outlet that the new “Cliffhanger” is not a reboot, and much more like “Creed” in that Stallone returns as his character Gabriel Walker whilst also setting up the next generation of mountain rescuers.
That said, the film sounds like it’s going to be built on similar emotional beats from a tragic accident early on leading to an estrangement between characters, along with some bad guys up to no good on a mountain top:
“Stallone’s character will be, of the age he is now – Gabe Walker – he’s got a daughter, he’s got an heir apparent, pseudo son, and they have a mountaineering company, Italian Alps. Tragedy strikes that’s very similar to what happened in the original movie, so the father and daughter have to deal with that and how to overcome tragedy.
[How do we get through traumatic experiences and fight to move forward? It’s what extreme sports like climbing are all about. And of course, there might be some nefarious bad guys that show up in the Italian Alps, and all hell breaks loose.”
Waugh adds one of the big changes and technological advancements filmmaking-wise with the new film is in the sound design, which can be far more elaborate:
“Sonically, the sound design that wasn’t there in the early ‘90s. What we can do now with sound design. We’re gonna put you on the edge of that 1000-foot cliff when your fingernails are hanging onto a ledge the size of a penny, when you hear a boulder fly past your head and go to infinity, and your heart beats reverberating off the rocks “
The aim of the new film will be authenticity, taking a lesson out of the “Top Gun: Maverick” book and doing whatever they can for real. That includes shooting in the actual Dolomites in the Italian Alps where the film is set.
Currently, there’s no word as to when either of these films will go into production, let alone get released.
