Adam McKay may have shot to prominence as the director of broad, raucous Will Ferrell comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers, but he’s now established himself as an expert at crafting star-studded social satire mixed with prestige drama.
His last two movies The Big Short and Vice landed a combined total of thirteen Academy Award nominations, with McKay landing a Best Adapted Screenplay win for the former in among five personal nods for writing, directing and producing. According to the latest reports, Netflix’s Don’t Look Up is poised to follow a very similar path.
The disaster comedy comes to theaters on December 12 before hitting streaming two weeks later, with a recent post on the AwardsWorthy forum teasing that it’s set to become one of the heaviest hitters on the upcoming circuit.
“This just screened to a group of critics here and… I wasn’t ready for this but… They’re raving it like crazy. Like, they’re thinking this will get around 10 nods and win many of them. It has much more VFX than I expected. The original song is not an end-titles one but marks one of the funniest scenes, Streep can win her 4th, Original Screenplay win may be a lock, SAG Ensemble is in the bag, this is Leo’s best ever, the film’s insanely funny kinda raving I’m talking about. I don’t know what to think right now.”
That’s not much of a surprise when the cast alone features Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep and Mark Rylance as part of the most stacked ensemble this side of Avengers: Endgame. Netflix has been making a concerted effort to beef up its roster of potential awards contenders on an annual basis, and it sounds as though Don’t Look Up could be the streamer’s marquee title if it lives up to such lofty early buzz.
