Years and years of forgettable genre garbo earned January a reputation in Hollywood — a cold month for colder leftovers. But thanks to the likes of Gerard Butler and Jason Statham, plus a greater respect among the Letterboxd crowd for beat-’em-up superstars, the month has become something like Oscar season for action heads. This year, with Greenland 2 and Shelter arriving within weeks of each other, director Ric Roman Waugh has grabbed the crown of this reborn month. He is the king of January movies.

“I’d rather be the king of April or May and have a little bit of the weather,” Waugh jokes, but he accepts Polygon bestowing him with the honorific.

Even though his back-to-back projects are landing in January, neither of them are paycheck gigs. “They’re both films that are really dear to me,” he says. Greenland 2 let him complete the apocalyptic survival story of a family led by Gerard Butler, while Shelter, out on Jan. 30, began with an unexpected phone call from Jason Statham about a script the actor was “super passionate about doing.”

Waugh occupies........

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