What we knew about “Don’t Look Up,” the upcoming Jennifer Lawrence-starring “comedy,” directed by Adam McKay, was that [via Deadline] it was going to tell the story of two low-level astronomers who must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching asteroid that will destroy Earth.”
Recently, we ended up getting more news about the McKay/J-Law project and, suffice to say, it sounds much more politically-charged today, in the era of COVID-19, than it did just a month ago. Speaking to Rolling Stone, McKay says his film was set to tackle a global catastrophe and a bumbling U.S. President who refuses to listen to his White House scientists advice:
"So it’s funny in a dark way. We were scouting a new movie in Boston when this whole Corona Virus thing hit. And the movie is about an asteroid is gonna hit earth and destroy the earth and the two scientists who discovered it, Jennifer Lawrence is gonna play the Ph.D. candidate who is the one who makes the discovery and we’re still casting the professor. And the whole idea is that the President doesn’t understand the science and kind of soft sells it and the urgency is kind of lost, and so these two scientists have to go on a media tour and kind of get caught up in the social media vortex and TV shows and they’re just trying to say that “Hey, we’re all gonna die”.
"So while we’re scouting that movie, this is all going on with the Corona Virus and we’re seeing clips of Trump saying oh it’s nothing and we’re seeing the right-wing media say it’s a hoax and meanwhile this thing is spreading in this frightening way, and we all had to run and jump on a plane and get out of town and go back to Los Angeles. So as we’re scouting this movie that is a comedy, the actual reality is happening and then Trump is doing it in a way that is so much bigger more cartoonish than our characters and our script."
McKay has decided to bring Lawrence along for a movie which is being billed as his return to comedy, after the dramatic sparks of “The Big Short” and “Vice.” If you remember, McKay and Will Ferrell were the bad boys of frat comedy back in the early aughts, a director/actor team responsible for the likes of “Anchorman,” “Step Brothers” and “Talladega Nights.”
Production on “Don’t Look Up” was set to begin in April and stream via Netflix by late/December 2020, but that’s obviously all changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has basically shut down almost every production in the business.
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.