Netflix’s 2021 apocalyptic sci-fi film Don’t Look Up is the second most-watched Netflix film of all time (behind 2021's Red Notice) and now its is saying that the movie has grown more and more pertinent in today’s times. Per The Hollywood Reporter, McKay said viewers really “connected” to the movie and are more than three years after its release.

Don’t Look Up “tells the story of two low-level astronomers, who must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet earth,” states the film’s logline. The movie garnered mixed reviews from critics when it was released and currently has a 56% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score, or Popcornmeter score is a more respectable 78%.

The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Ron Pearlman (Hellboy), Ariana Grande (Wicked), Kid Cudi and Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets). Don’t Look Up was nominated for four Academy Awards in 2022, including Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Original Screenplay.

“The estimates of how many people saw that movie…it’s somewhere between 400 million and half a billion,” McKay told NME. “ Being lied to by their leaders, lied to by their big news media, and being lied to by industries. It was funny - when I realized that was the common connection point, I was like, of course!”

McKay continued, “It’s happening everywhere now with this global neo-liberal economy that we’re all living in. It’s such a cancer and everyone is feeling it.” The themes included in the movie, such as climate change, seem more relevant than ever with the ongoing fires in Los Angeles. “In the face of these dramatic catastrophes that keep happening, a movie seems really small and ridiculous,” McKay said. “But what was inspiring and energizing was the popular response to that movie, not the critics and the cultural gatekeepers who hated it.”

The director, who serves as executive producer on HBO’s Succession, also commented on the L.A. fires.“ We have so many friends that have lost their homes. Usually when there are disasters in Southern California TV coverage makes it look worse than it is. This is the first time that I’ve had to tell friends and family reaching out that it’s actually worse than what you’re seeing,” he said.

McKay, who won an Oscar for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay for 2015’s The Big Short, starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt, said he thinks “we’re in a very frightening time,” and “in a lot of ways, where it no longer serves the needs of average working people - and it’s fine with mass destruction, war, lack of health care, predatory loans, but most of all climate breakdown.”

He added that things have almost come to a point of no return. “That’s the thing you really can’t fix. Once we hit these tipping points (scientific thresholds, which once passed, mean changes to climate, biodiversity loss or patterns become irreversible) we’re going to have to deal with (the results) for tens, hundreds, and thousands of years. ,” McKay said.

Don’t Look Up is streaming on Netflix.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter, NME