Watch Hollywood Blow Up London in the Trailer For London Has Fallen

At this point, the canon of apocalypse cinema is predictable. The audience will witness one of four eschatological events — an alien invasion; a meteor strike; some implausible meteorological event; an epidemic that either kills people or turns them into zombies — that will seemingly only ravage the United States, where Morgan Freeman sits in the White House.

Should these catastrophes strike elsewhere, we witness them in brief scenes that serve only to preview what will soon come to America’s shores. These moments tend overwhelmingly to take place in Asia: recall the destruction of Shanghai in Armageddon, or that bizarre hail storm that manages to literally kill a Tokyo salaryman in The Day After Tomorrow.

London, one of the world’s largest cities, is usually spared. There was Threads, the BBC’s 1984 Cold War morality play about nuclear war, but that’s mostly it. Apparently eyeing this lapse as a problem, Hollywood will soon release London Has Fallen, the frankly titled sequel to 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen in which North Korean operatives blow up the White House.

In London Has Fallen, London falls, under circumstances not made entirely clear by its teaser trailer. We learn that the British Prime Minister has died, and that his funeral is “the most protected event on earth,” and then disaster happens. Chelsea Bridge blows up. The Queen’s Guard abandons its usual stoicism and begins shooting at an unspecified target. Westminster Abbey blows up. Morgan Freeman, reprising his role as U.S. Vice-President Allan Trumbull, watches aghast from the White House Situation Room.

The film is slated for a January 2016 release.