When I broke the news that Netflix had dropped Adam McKay’s “Average Height, Average Build,” it only took the filmmaker a few weeks to quickly jump into another project. This one, according to TheInSneider, is about climate change and stars Amy Adams and Sam Rockwell.
The film, inspired by David Wallace-Wells’ bestseller “The Uninhabitable Earth,” has been retitled “Greenhouse.” McKay’s new script dives headfirst into the darkest scenarios imaginable for our planet. Think tsunamis, extinctions, disease outbreaks, fires, droughts, famines, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and wars — all of it comes straight from Wallace-Wells’ book.
In an interview with Republik, McKay spoke about the project for the first time, calling it “probably the greatest film I’ve written,” because of its “dimensions.” He says the film “ranges from drama to action. There are humorous elements, but also elements of great tragedy. And indeed, there are also hopeful scenarios in this film that show what concrete action against global warming can look like. And how beautiful and transformative that can be.”
The film, McKay notes, includes “many scenarios, characters and places in the world. The only catch? “Let’s see if I can even realize the film,” he admitted.
In another interview with Humo, he doubled down on the scale of the project: “It’s the most ambitious script I’ve ever written, in the sense that it takes place in multiple places on earth. It bridges time, with big leaps in the story. It’s pretty epic.”
McKay is currently rewriting the script, though he concedes that he’s having “a tough time to get a movie like this made, but we’re going to do our best.” If “Greenhouse” doesn’t come to fruition, he already has a backup: a more intimate climate-change drama about “a love story between two teenagers who are being evacuated. They become climate refugees and fall in love.”
This is where McKay is at right now. His last film was the 2021 Netflix satire “Don’t Look Up,” which tackled an end-of-the-world allegory and was nominated for Best Picture. Before that, he notably directed “The Big Short,” “Vice,” and “Anchorman.”
But as I’ve noticed, McKay’s not finding it easy to greenlight any of his projects lately. Netflix scrapped “Average Height, Average Build,” which was set to star Robert Pattinson, Robert Downey Jr., Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker, and Danielle Deadwyler. The $150M+ budget was too steep for the streamer, and other studios balked at the idea as well.
With “Greenhouse,” McKay is taking another big swing. The question now: can he get it made?