Brrrr Cold War: Filmmaker R.J. Cutler To Drill Into Secret 1960s Plan To Turn Greenland Into U.S. Nuclear Missile Base
By Matthew Carey
February 11, 2025
Award-winning director R.J. Cutler’s latest project is taking him to a very remote and very icy environment.
He’s at work on a documentary about Camp Century, a U.S. military installation built in Greenland at the height of the Cold War. Officially billed at the time as, “Nothing to see here, folks – we’re just studying the feasibility of ice-cap military outposts,” the site’s true purpose was only revealed decades later: a secret nuclear missile complex buried underneath the Greenland ice sheet.
The highly classified endeavor was dubbed Project Iceworm (a vaguely sinister appellation that would have delighted Ernst Stavro Blofeld), “a major military installation, with almost two miles of covered trenches as well as laboratories, an underground railway track and a… portable nuclear reactor to supply power,” as the Washington Post reported. The underground city “was planned to eventually be three times the size of Denmark… include more than 2,000 firing positions through which the 600 MRBMs (nicknamed ‘Iceman missiles’) could be moved on rail cars.”
Cutler tells Deadline, “The largely unknown story of Camp Century – this top-secret military base hidden under the ice of Greenland – is such a rich metaphor for the eternal desire to bury our secrets. But secrets always come out, and as the Arctic ice melts, Camp Century is coming into clear view.”
Last month, Pres. Trump called for the U.S. to take possession of Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark. He also raised that specter (should I say “Spectre”?) in his first term, but this time hasn’t ruled out military action to achieve his goal. However, the Cutler documentary project could examine a downside to seizing Greenland (apart from disrupting the NATO alliance): the site is strewn with hazardous material.
That includes “9,200 tons of building equipment, 53,000 gallons of diesel fuel, carcinogenic chemicals used in paint, and radioactive cooling water from the camp’s portable nuclear reactor,” the Post reports. “A 2016 study suggested that these contaminants are likely to be released in a few decades’ time as a warmer climate continues to melt the ice sheet.”
“I’ve been fascinated by the mystery of Camp Century for some time,” Cutler notes. “Greenland is suddenly back in the news, but the territory’s strategic importance—rich in natural resources and crucial for military positioning—has long captivated American leaders. Our film will tell a great story, while also looking at the broader implications of Arctic geopolitics in an era of climate change and global power shifts.”
Camp Century and Project Iceworm caused significant environmental damage, but a potential benefit of the secret installation has recently emerged. Back in the 1960s when the military construction plan was being implemented, scientists “drilled through more than 4,500 feet of ice to pull up a 12-foot-long soil and rock sample from beneath the ice sheet,” as CNN reported in 2023. That preserved ice core is now being studied to offer clues about the impact of climate change and the potential for dramatically higher sea levels.
The ice core reached soils dating back 400,000 and scientists discovered, to their surprise, that it showed Greenland in that earlier epoch was ice-free. Their study, published in Science magazine, augurs trouble ahead for humanity as ice once again recedes from Greenland, this time caused by human-generated global warming.
“It’s really the first bulletproof evidence that much of the Greenland ice sheet vanished when it got warm,” Prof. Paul Bierman, lead author of the study, told CNN. “Greenland’s past, preserved in 12 feet of frozen soil, suggests a warm, wet, and largely ice-free future for planet Earth.”
No estimated timetable for the release of Cutler’s documentary has been announced. It’s a production of This Machine, the company Cutler launched in 2020 that’s a part of Sony Pictures Television.
The filmmaker directed two documentaries in 2024: Elton John: Never Too Late (co-directed with David Furnish) which has an earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song, and Martha, his film about Queen of Hearths Martha Stewart. He has several projects in the works in addition to the Camp Century documentary, including the baseball-focused documentary series Fight for Glory: World Series 2024.
Cutler is a two-time winner of the primetime Emmy Award, for Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium (2023) and American High (2001). He won a News and Documentary Emmy for Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul (2024). He began his filmmaking career as a producer on the Oscar-nominated classic documentary The War Room, directed by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.
