Adam McKay’s career has been fascinating in recent years. After directing raucous Will Ferrell comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers, lately he’s pivoted to angrier fare based on real-life American catastrophes like The Big Short and Vice – and now, it looks like his next film will combine both of those modes. Later this year, he’s releasing Don’t Look Up on Netflix – and while this one is a fictional story, it’s channelling very real-life anxieties about world-ending scenarios, and a planet that seems ambivalent about doing anything to stop it. As with McKay’s recent work, that potentially heavy topic comes with a dollop of star power – leading the way here is Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, with supporting performances from Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, and Timothée Chalamet. Watch the first teaser:
Well, doesn’t that look like panic-attack-inducing entertainment? Don’t Look Up star DiCaprio and Lawrence as a pair of astronomers who become aware of a comet heading straight for Earth – but their words of warning aren't taken too seriously by Meryl Streep’s president (what a combination of three words). In the trailer, we get brief glimpses of some of the other players: Chalamet with a kind of straggly mullet, Hill as a member of President Streep’s cabinet, Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett as news anchors, Mark Rylance in an odd wig, Ron Perlman flying a rocket-ship, and glimpses of Scott ‘Kid Cudi’ Mescudi and Ariana Grande in there too. How’s that for an insane cast?
Netflix is positioning this one as one of its major Christmas holiday releases – it’s dropping on the streaming service on Christmas Eve (aka 24 December), preceded two weeks earlier by a limited cinematic run. Assuming the actual world hasn’t ended by then, that is.