Adam McKay Says ‘Don’t Look Up’ Was ‘Hated’ by ‘Cultural Gatekeepers’

Climate activist and filmmaker Adam McKay was discussing the Los Angeles Fires and climate change during an interview with NME when he reflected on his satirical comedy Don’t Look Up.

When asked about the film’s impact as one of the most watched movies on Netflix more than three years after its release, McKay said that in “the face of these dramatic catastrophes that keep happening, a movie seems really small and ridiculous. But what was inspiring and energizing was the popular response to that movie, not the critics and the cultural gatekeepers who hated it.” He continued, “It ended up being number one in something like 85 countries, as diverse as Pakistan, Vietnam, US and Uruguay. That’s extremely rare for a comedy which is usually confined by cultural regional reference points.”

At the time of the 2021 film’s release — which featured a star-studded cast including the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet, Tyler Perry, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, and more — the film received mixed reviews with many critics panning it, despite Don’t Look Up becoming Netflix’s second-most-watched movie. The film centers around two astronomers desperately attempting to alert humanity of a planet-ending comet, a metaphor for climate change and a satirical take on media and political response to the climate crisis.

“The estimates of how many people saw that movie — Netflix will never say exactly — but it’s somewhere between 400 million and half a billion,” McKay told NME. “Viewers all really connected with the idea of being gaslit. 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! 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.”

When previously speaking to Rolling Stone on climate activism, McKay touched on the idea of using the art of the uncomfortable to move public opinion. “In the sense that both approaches are human, muscular emotional approaches. I think the, quote, truth, has been sold and arbitrated and parsed so much over the past — really since the rise of neoliberalism over the past 40 years — that we need to go to that muscular sense,” he said. “It’s why I decided to make Don’t Look Up a big, farcical comedy, because I realize you can’t fake laughter.”