Gerard Butler-starring ‘Geostorm’ drops its second official trailer

Once upon a time, Gerard Butler seemed like the next big thing, but after a string of kitschy romantic comedies and generic action flicks, it’s hard not to worry when you see his name getting top billing. Still, while his breakout role in Zach Snyder’s 300 now seems a distant memory, he is not exactly begging for work either. Case in point: Warner Bros. is banking big bucks on the upcoming disaster flick Geostorm, with Butler in the lead role.

The teaser and the first official trailer provided only a disaster reel set to ominous music, but we can now confirm that the film features (gasp!) actual dialogue. As reported by ScreenCrush, the studio released the second official trailer, which runs about two-and-a-half minutes and gives us a bit more info on what is causing the calamities teased in earlier spots.

In the film’s universe, humans have learned to manipulate the weather, but — surprise, surprise — they wield that power irresponsibly, resulting in a global, unnatural disaster. The storm includes tornado, tidal waves, flash freezes, and pretty much any other meteorological mishap you can imagine.

A few things stand out to us here: 1.) Andy “President Palma” Garcia. 2.) Ed Harris (Leonard Dekkom) is the new Kevin Bacon 3.) This looks like it could be bad … but in a good way.

Co-director Dean Devlin served as a producer on Independence Day, which is remembered as a classic film but is absurd in too many ways to count. If this film takes a lesson from that one and doesn’t take itself too seriously — and if it doesn’t devolve into a ceaseless CGI showcase — it could actually be kind of fun.

Those are by no means trivial ifs, however, and predicting how this will do feels like as much of a crapshoot as predicting the weather — you will get no fearless forecast from us; we’re taking the wait-and-see approach.

Geostorm is expected to descend upon theaters on October 20. In addition to those mentioned above, the film stars Abbie Cornish (Limitless), Robert Sheehan (Season of the Witch), Jim Sturgess (21, Cloud Atlas), and Amr Waked (Lucy).