Adam McKay Touts ‘Don’t Look Up’ Being Watched by More than ‘400 Million’ People Despite Critics’ Pans

Adam McKay is not someone to let things go. He took to X to bash the Democratic Party left and right after Donald Trump won re-election in November. And he’s apparently still aggrieved by how critics trashed his Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up” in 2021.

The movie was positioned as a metaphor for climate change: A comet was heading toward a collision with earth that would cause an extinction-level catastrophe. Instead of most people taking the impending doom seriously, the U.S. president tries to deny it by peddling MAGA-style “Don’t Look Up” caps, the media tries to sensationalize it and divert attention instead to the hotness of the astrophysicist (Leonardo DiCaprio) who first made the discovery, and a tech CEO (Mark Rylance) tries to figure out how they can mine precious metals from the comet all while preparing his own getaway from the planet.

As wildfires continued to burn around Los Angeles and endanger lives and communities, McKay spoke to the NME about the enduring impact of “Don’t Look Up.”

“In the face of these dramatic catastrophes that keep happening, a movie seems really small and ridiculous,” he said. “But what was inspiring and energizing was the popular response to that movie, not the critics and the cultural gatekeepers who hated it.”

“It ended up being number one in something like 85 countries, as diverse as Pakistan, Vietnam, U.S. and Uruguay. That’s extremely rare for a comedy which is usually confined by cultural regional reference points.”

“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. 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.”

“Don’t Look Up” has a 49 on Metacritic. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich gave it a C- in his review.