Netflix has released the first trailer for Adam McKay's star-studded science-fiction comedy Don't Look Up, led by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio.
In the film, Lawrence and DiCaprio play an astronomy grad student and a professor, respectively, who together discover that a comet is on a direct collision course with Earth. Unlike in Deep Impact or Armageddon, however, nobody in power seems to care about preventing the extinction-level disaster. Among the various characters whom Lawrence and DiCaprio have to convince to take the threat seriously, Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill play the apathetic president and her son/Chief of Staff, respectively, while Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry play morning talk show hosts. The huge cast also includes Mark Rylance, Ron Perlman, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi), Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis and Tomer Sisley.
Don't Look Up was written as a satirical take on the incompetent handling of the climate crisis by the United States government and the media. It was written before but filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a movie in which politicians dismiss the end of the world as "so boring" and only the scientists know what they're doing has only gained additional relevancy in light of the events of the past two years. With this film, Adam McKay is looking to balance the polemic political tone of his recent Academy Award nominees with the crowd-pleasing sensibilities of the comedies he built his career on -- the trailer's title cards make sure to describe McKay as both "the director of The Big Short and Vice AND Step Brothers and Anchorman."
Originally in development at Paramount, Netflix is positioning Don't Look Up as one of its major awards season contenders, alongside releases like The Power of the Dog, The Harder They Fall, tick... tick... BOOM! and Passing. The crew includes such previous Oscar winners and nominees as cinematographer Linus Sandgren (won for La La Land), editor Hank Corwin (nominated for The Big Short, won for Vice) and composer Nicholas Brittell (nominated for Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk). McKay directed, produced and wrote the screenplay based on a story he developed with David Sirota, a political commentator who writes for The Guardian and is the editor-at-large of Jacobin.
Don't Look Up will have a limited theatrical release Dec. 10 ahead of its streaming debut on Netflix Dec. 24.
Source: YouTube