Don't Look Up

Kate Dibiasky, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at Michigan State University, discovers a previously unknown comet. Her adviser, Dr. Randall Mindy, confirms that it will collide with Earth in approximately six months and is large enough to cause a global extinction event. NASA verifies the findings, and Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe, head of their Planetary Defense Coordination Office, accompanies Dibiasky and Mindy to present their findings to the White House. However, they are met with apathy from President Janie Orlean and her Chief of Staff Jason Orlean, who is also her son. Oglethorpe encourages Dibiasky and Mindy to leak the news to the media, which they then do on The Daily Rip, a popular morning talk show. When hosts Jack Bremmer and Brie Evantee treat the topic flippantly, Dibiasky loses her temper and angrily rants about the threat before leaving. Mindy receives public approval for his looks, while Dibiasky becomes the subject of negative memes for her on-air behavior. Public reaction is muted, and the announcement is downplayed by NASA Director Jocelyn Calder, a top donor to Orlean with no background in astronomy. When Orlean's sexual relations with Supreme Court nominee Sheriff Conlon become news, the president tries to divert public attention to the looming threat of the comet, announcing a project to use nuclear weapons to strike and divert the comet. The mission successfully launches, but Orlean abruptly aborts it when Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular and another top donor, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars' worth of rare-earth elements. The White House agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting and recovering it from the ocean, using technology proposed by BASH in a scheme that has not undergone peer review. Orlean sidelines Dibiasky and Oglethorpe while hiring Mindy as the National Science Advisor. Dibiasky attempts to mobilize public opposition to the scheme but gives up under threat from Orlean's administration. Mindy becomes a prominent voice advocating for the comet's commercial opportunities and begins an affair with Evantee. World opinion is divided among people who believe the comet is a severe threat, those who decry alarmism and believe that mining a destroyed comet will create jobs, and those who deny that the comet even exists. When Dibiasky returns home to Illinois, her parents kick her out of the house and she begins a relationship with a young man named Yule, a skateboarder, shoplifter, and Evangelical she meets at her retail job. Mindy's wife comes to Washington to confront him about his infidelity, but returns to Michigan without him. Mindy questions whether Isherwell's technology will be able to break apart the comet, angering the billionaire. Becoming frustrated with the administration, Mindy finally breaks down and rants on The Daily Rip, criticizing Orlean for downplaying the impending apocalypse and questioning humanity's indifference. Cut off from the administration, Mindy reconciles with Dibiasky as the comet becomes visible from Earth. Mindy, Dibiasky, and Oglethorpe organize a protest campaign on social media, telling people to "Just Look Up" and call on other countries to conduct comet interception operations. Simultaneously, Orlean starts an anti-campaign telling people "Don't Look Up". Oglethorpe informs Mindy and Dibiasky that Orlean and BASH cut Russia, India, and China out of the rights for the comet-mining deal, so those countries prepared their own joint deflection mission—only for their spacecraft to explode on takeoff, ending the possibility of a successful deflection. As the comet becomes larger in the sky, Orlean's supporters start turning on her administration. BASH's launches aimed at breaking the comet apart go awry, and everyone, beginning with Isherwell and Orlean in the flight control center, soon realizes that humanity is doomed. Isherwell, Orlean, and other elites board a sleeper spaceship designed to find an Earth-like planet; unthinkingly, Orlean leaves her son Jason behind. Orlean offers Mindy two places on the ship, but he declines, choosing to spend a final evening with his wife and children, and friends Oglethorpe, Dibiasky, and Yule. As expected, the comet strikes off the coast of Chile, causing a worldwide disaster and triggering an explosive extinction-level event, with globally catastrophic scenes being shown prior to the obliteration of the Mindy family gathering. In a mid-credits scene, Orlean, Isherwell and the surviving people who left Earth land on a lush alien planet 22,740 years later. Exiting naked and admiring the habitable world, Orlean is suddenly killed by a large, bird-like creature—a death predicted earlier by BASH's algorithms—and a further pack of the creatures surrounds and begins to converge on the planetary newcomers. In a post-credits scene on Earth, Jason emerges from the rubble, having survived the impact. He records himself, declaring himself the "last man on Earth", and asking any viewers still alive to "like and subscribe". ==Cast==

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy, an astronomy professor at Michigan State University (MSU) and Kate's teacher • Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky, an MSU doctoral candidate in astronomy • Meryl Streep as Janie Orlean, the President of the United States. • Cate Blanchett as Brie Evantee, co-host of The Daily Rip • Rob Morgan as Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe, head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office • Jonah Hill as Jason Orlean, the White House Chief of Staff and President Orlean's son. • Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of the fictitious tech company BASH and one of Orlean's top donors. • Tyler Perry as Jack Bremmer, the co-host of The Daily Rip • Timothée Chalamet as Yule, a young shoplifter whom Kate befriends • Ron Perlman as Colonel Benedict Drask, war veteran and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient who is sent up with the initial launch to divert the comet • Ariana Grande as Riley Bina, an international pop music star • Kid Cudi (credited as his real name Scott Mescudi) as DJ Chello, an international rapper who becomes Riley's fiancé on The Daily Rip • Himesh Patel as Phillip Kaj, a journalist at Autopsy and Kate's boyfriend • Melanie Lynskey as June Mindy, Dr. Randall Mindy's wife • Michael Chiklis as Dan Pawketty, the host of the conservative Patriot News Network • Tomer Sisley as Adul Grelio, the senior editor at the New York Herald • Paul Guilfoyle as US Air Force Lieutenant General Stuart Themes, the Pentagon liaison to the White House • Robert Joy as Congressman Tenant, a congressman and follower of Janie Other cast members include Kevin Craig West as the Secretary of State; Erik Parillo as Sheriff Conlon, Orlean's choice for Supreme Court Justice who ends up in a sex scandal with Orlean; Jon Glaser as Meow Man; Sarah Nolen as the puppeteer of Sammy; Allyn Burrows as Mr. Dibiasky, the father of Kate; and Tori Davis Lawlor as Mrs. Dibiasky, the mother of Kate. Additionally, Robert Hurst Radochia and Conor Sweeney appear as Randall and June's sons, Evan and Marshall Mindy. Hettienne Park appears as Dr. Jocelyn Calder, the Administrator of NASA. Chris Everett appears as Paula Woods, chief editor at the New York Herald. There are cameo appearances by Liev Schreiber as the BASH narrator, journalist Ashleigh Banfield as Dalia Hensfield, Sarah Silverman as comedian Sarah Benterman, Indian actor Ishaan Khatter as Raghav Manavalan, and Chris Evans in an uncredited role as film actor Devin Peters, who stars in the film Total Devastation. Matthew Perry and Gina Gershon were cast for undisclosed roles in the film, but their scenes were cut. ==Production==

Produced by Hyperobject Industries and Bluegrass Films, the film was announced in November 2019 and sold by Paramount Pictures to Netflix several months later. Jennifer Lawrence became the first member of the cast to join, with Leonardo DiCaprio signing on after his discussions with McKay on adjustments to the script; the rest of the cast was added through 2020. After Vice was released, David Sirota asked Adam McKay to use his "superpowers of humor and writing" to create a climate change movie that would be different from the Mad Max-type post-apocalyptic films that had previously been released. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, McKay described how he and Sirota came up with the premise of ''Don't Look Up'' while discussing the existential threat of climate change and their frustration over the lack of media coverage it was receiving:I started talking to a lot of [climate] scientists. I kept looking for good news, and I never got it. Everything I was hearing was worse than what I was hearing on the mainstream media. So I was talking to [David Sirota], and we were both just like, "can you believe that this isn't being covered in the media? That it's being pushed to the end of the story? That there's no headlines?" And Sirota just offhandedly said, "it's like a comet is heading to Earth and it's going to destroy us all and no one cares." And I was like, "that's the idea!" McKay has described the film as a "blend of broad comedy" with elements of disaster films and horror films. Astronomer Amy Mainzer, principal investigator of NASA's NEOWISE mission that tracks near-Earth objects, served as an "astrotech adviser" for the film. She provided scientific advice and supported with writing scenes from an early stage of production. On November 8, 2019, it was announced that Paramount Pictures would distribute the film, with Adam McKay writing, directing and producing under his Hyperobject Industries banner. On February 19, 2020, Netflix acquired the film from Paramount and Jennifer Lawrence was cast in the film. On May 12, 2020, it was announced that Cate Blanchett had joined the film. In September 2020, Rob Morgan joined the cast. In October 2020, DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Himesh Patel, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi (Scott Mescudi) and Tomer Sisley were added. McKay wrote the part of Dibiasky specifically for Lawrence, and spent four to five months going over ideas with DiCaprio, tweaking the script before the actor ultimately signed on. In November 2020, Tyler Perry, Melanie Lynskey and Ron Perlman joined the cast. Mark Rylance and Michael Chiklis were revealed as part of the cast in February 2021. Paul Guilfoyle was announced in May. Matthew Perry was also cast and had scenes filmed with Hill that were ultimately cut from the final film due to health issues. Gina Gershon also filmed a scene with DiCaprio and Blanchett that was cut from the film. Leonardo DiCaprio received top billing on the film's posters and the trailers while Jennifer Lawrence was accorded top billing at the beginning of the film itself. This was also the case with earlier productions The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) with James Stewart and John Wayne and ''All the President's Men'' (1976) with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Principal photography was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming commenced on November 18, 2020, at various locations in Boston, Massachusetts. Part of the film takes place in New York City with Boston standing in as New York. Filming also took place in other Massachusetts cities including Brockton, Framingham, and Westborough. On February 5, 2021, Jennifer Lawrence was mildly injured during filming when a controlled glass explosion went awry. Filming wrapped on February 18, 2021. Lawsuits On December 6, 2023, Adam McKay, along with Netflix, was sued for copyright infringement over ''Don't Look Up''. William Collier, an author from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, claimed that he is the original writer of the story, set in Baton Rouge, called "Stanley's Comet", which he self-published in 2012. Collier's daughter worked for Jimmer Miller Entertainment, part of McKay's management team until 2015. Collier alleges that his daughter submitted the text to Mosaic Media Group and it was then received by McKay's manager. "Since Stanley’s Comet was received by McKay’s manager, custom and practice in the entertainment industry dictates that this constitutes receipt by McKay," writes Steven Lowe, a lawyer for Collier, in the suit. "Furthermore, upon information and belief, the Novel was transmitted via courier, email or hand-delivery (or via other means) to McKay himself." "The movie, like the novel, makes a strong political critique of the media, the government, and the cultural elite by showcasing their shallowness and reliance on popular opinion polls and social media algorithms," writes USC professor of comparative literature David Roman. "McKay’s film is also full of satire and humor and — like Stanley’s Comet — moves toward the absurd. In each case, the irony drives the humor and the social critique and does so in the same style and method." Music To promote the film, on December 3, 2021, Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi released the single "Just Look Up", which is also performed in the film. The original score for the film is composed by Nicholas Britell, who previously scored McKay's The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018) and the HBO television series Succession (2019–2022); McKay served as an executive producer of the latter. He used a wide range of instrumentation that reflect varied music styles and genres. He did this so as to give a remainder on the existential crisis on the planet following a catastrophic event as well as the absurdity of how people react to it. Apart from "Just Look Up", the film also featured "Second Nature" by Bon Iver, which was released along with Britell's score album on December 10, by Republic Records, and "Doorman" by Slowthai. ==Reception==

Box office and VoD On February 19, 2020, it was announced that Netflix planned to release the film in 2020. The film premiered in New York City on December 5, 2021. It received a limited theatrical release on December 10, and began streaming on Netflix on December 24. The film made an estimated $260,000 from 500 theaters on its first day, and a total of $700,000 in its opening weekend. ''Don't Look Up'' was the most-streamed English-language film on Netflix during its first week of release with a viewership of 111.03 million hours, the second highest viewership for a movie during its debut weekend on Netflix. It was the second most-streamed-film of the week in the United States according to TV Time. Per Nielsen, the film had a viewership of 1.6 billion minutes in the United States. In the second week, it retained its first position with a viewership of 152.29 million hours, which also set the record for highest weekly viewership for any film ever on Netflix. For its first 28 days, the film culminated a viewership of 359.8 million hours, making it the second most-watched film within 28 days of release on Netflix during this period of time. By March 20, the film had been streamed in 10.3 million households in the United States according to Samba TV, including 641,000 since the Oscar nomination announcements on February 8. Critical response The San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle praised the film, "''Don't Look Up'' might be the funniest movie of 2021. It's the most depressing too, and that odd combination makes for a one-of-a-kind experience. ... McKay gives you over two hours of laughs while convincing you that the world is coming to an end." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars and said: "From Streep and DiCaprio and Lawrence through the supporting players, ''Don't Look Up is filled with greatly talented actors really and truly selling this material—but the volume remains at 11 throughout the story when some changes in tone here and there might have more effectively carried the day." In the Los Angeles Times'', Justin Chang wrote, "Nothing about the foolishness and outrageousness of what the movie shows us—no matter how virtuosically sliced and diced by McKay's characteristically jittery editor, Hank Corwin—can really compete with the horrors of our real-world American idiocracy." Amit Katwala of Wired concluded that "''Don't Look Up nails the frustration of being a scientist." Linda Marric of The Jewish Chronicle'' gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "There is something genuinely endearing about a film that doesn't seem to care one bit about coming across as silly as long as its message is heard". In a negative review, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it "A cynical, insufferably smug satire stuffed to the gills with stars that purports to comment on political and media inattention to the climate crisis but really just trivializes it. Dr. Strangelove it ain't." Peter Debruge of Variety called it a "smug, easy-target political satire" and wrote, "''Don't Look Up plays like the leftie answer to Armageddon—which is to say, it ditches the Bruckheimer approach of assembling a bunch of blue-collar heroes to rocket out to space and nuke the approaching comet, opting instead to spotlight the apathy, incompetence and financial self-interest of all involved." In The Guardian, Charles Bramesco wrote that the "script states the obvious as if everyone else is too stupid to realize it and does so from a position of lofty superiority that would drive away any partisans who still need to be won over." In The Sociological Review'', Katherine Cross accused the film of "smug condescension" and wrote it "is designed to flatter a certain type of liberal viewer into feeling like they're the last sane person in the world, surrounded by morons." Reviews from right-wing publications were nearly unanimously negative. Madeline Fry Schultz of the American conservative publication Washington Examiner wrote "McKay manages to deliver nothing more than a derivative and meandering 'satire' of capitalism, Donald Trump, and climate deniers that will be forgotten in less than six months." Kyle Smith of the National Review wrote it "expends 140 brain-injuriously unfunny minutes... propelling low-velocity spitballs at social media, Washington, tech moguls, Trumpism, and (this detail feels thrown in last minute) anti-vaxxers." Nathan J. Robinson, editor of American progressive publication Current Affairs, believes that "critics were not only missing the point of the film in important ways, but that the very way they discussed the film exemplified the problem that the film was trying to draw attention to. Some of the responses to the movie could have appeared in the movie itself." Slavoj Žižek, writing in Compact, said "critics were displeased by the light tone of ''Don't Look Up!, claiming it trivializes the ultimate apocalypse. What really bothered these critics is the exact opposite: The film highlights trivialization that permeates not only the establishment, but even the protesters." In The Guardian, Catherine Bennett viewed the film as astute and was caustic about the critical reviews. Writing for the American socialist publication Jacobin'', Branko Marcetic says that the plot of the film, while absurd, does not exaggerate, noting the parallels between the film and our world, including oligarch-corrupted democracy, foolish and greedy politicians and a vapid media. Nevertheless he points out that while it is too late for the characters of the film to find the way out of their impending crisis, it is not too late for us. Journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot wrote that "no wonder journalists have slated it ... it's about them" and added that for environmental activists like himself, the film, while fastpaced and humorous, "seemed all too real". Author and activist Naomi Klein mentions it in her 2023 book Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by saying that "Kate's plight perfectly mirrors the bizarre contradictions of our high-stakes moment in planetary history: we are all trapped inside economic and social structures that encourage us to obsessively perfect our minuscule selves even as we know, if only on a subconscious level, that we are in the very last years when it might still be possible to avert an existential planetary crisis." Bong Joon-ho, director of Parasite, included ''Don't Look Up'' as one of his favorites of 2021. Reception amongst scientists Since the film's release, numerous climate scientists and climate communicators have offered positive opinions on the film. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian, climate scientist Peter Kalmus remarked, "''Don't Look Up'' is satire. But speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it's also the most accurate film about society's terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I've seen." Climate scientist Michael E. Mann also expressed support for the film, calling it "serious sociopolitical commentary posing as comedy". In an article for Scientific American, Rebecca Oppenheimer questioned the film's use of a comet impact as an effective metaphor for climate change, given the large differences in timescale of these differing potential extinction crisis events and the nature of their impacts, but praised its depiction of science denialism and depiction of a botched attempt to address a "planet-killer" comet. Writing in Physics World, Laura Hiscott said that this "genuinely funny and entertaining film" would appeal to scientists, who would appreciate the "nods to academia such as the importance of peer review, the 'publish or perish' problem and the issue of senior academics getting the credit for their PhD students' discoveries". One of the scenes in the film was compared on social media to a situation in Brazil. In that situation, microbiologist and science communicator Natália Pasternak Taschner criticized a news report made by TV Cultura on a live broadcast in December 2020. They told the Brazilian population to face the COVID-19 pandemic with "lightness", minimizing the risks. They also put pressure on the public to be content and uncritical of the Jair Bolsonaro administration's lack of effective response to the pandemic. Hearing about the comparisons, Pasternak thanked McKay, DiCaprio and Lawrence on Twitter, with the video subtitled in English, for the "incredible" film. Accolades == Analysis and themes ==

The topic of science communication is at the forefront of the film, as it revolves around Mindy and Dibiasky, two scientists, struggling to share the news of their discovery with politicians, talk show hosts, and civilians who are ignorant about the scientific facts of humanity's impending destruction by Comet Dibiasky. Many academic scholars of media and communication have written commentaries that analyze and critique the portrayal of science communication in the film. Americentrism In the Journal of Science Communication, Niels G. Mede writes "the film depicts sharp partisan divides, strong affective polarization, high distrust toward science within certain social milieus, and pronounced news media sensationalism, which have been found to be characteristic of the United States but not, or to a lesser extent, of several countries other than the US." From the same journal, writer Julie Doyle remarked that, "yet, as the film critiques existing structures and systems it does not imagine an alternative set of realities, nor explain the comet's cause. In focusing upon the fictional stories of scientists, politicians, and media celebrities, the film fails to center any marginalized voices, continuing to privilege global north perspectives, even as these are satirised." Doyle comments that "climate communication needs to keep in place both climate mitigation and adaptation, making the historical and structural inequalities of capitalism and colonialism the interconnected stories of both." Another way to mitigate science skepticism is through storytelling. Mede writes, "The film also illustrates that storytelling can be a promising strategy to mitigate these reservations ... showing how Mindy is advised before a TV interview that he is 'just telling a story' and must 'keep it simple.'" ==See also==