<em>Don’t Look Up</em> Is a Primal Scream of a Film

Adam McKay conceived of Don’t Look Up as a warning. Once Saturday Night Live’s head writer, he had gained attention as the director of anarchic Will Ferrell comedies such as Anchorman and before receiving Best Picture nominations for darker satires about the Great Recession () and the vice presidency of Dick Cheney (). “I kept getting this itchy feeling that there was just a giant shadow over all these stories,” McKay told me. “I was like, I have to do something about the climate.” The initial idea came from the political commentator and former Bernie Sanders speechwriter David Sirota, who said to him “something to the effect of, ‘The comet’s gonna hit and no one cares.’ It was very offhand, and that idea just kept coming back and bugging me.”