Don’t Look Up (2021)

Cate Blanchett as: Brie Evantee

Directed by: Adam Mckay
Selected Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Meryl Streep
Written by: Adam McKay (Story by Adam McKay and David Sirota)
Release Year: 2021
Genre: Comedy | Drama | Sci-fi
MPAA Rating: R

Kate Dibiasky, an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem — it’s on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a planet-killer the size of Mount Everest is an inconvenient fact to navigate. With the help of Dr. Oglethorpe, Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason, to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie and Jack. With only six months until the comet makes impact, managing the 24-hour news cycle and gaining the attention of the social media obsessed public before it’s too late proves shockingly comical — what will it take to get the world to just look up?!

Related Images

View more images at the gallery.

On set; FeaturetteRelated Videos

The videos after the trailer are playlists of featurettes, behind the scenes, selected interviews and conversation with the cast and crew, just click on the playlist icon/thumbnails to see the other videos in it.

Quotes from Cate Blanchett

“Adam [McKay] wrote this a couple of years before the pandemic, and every second that we’re on set, it became less and less like a satire and more and more like a documentary. Even when he was in post, there was a comet that was in the earth’s orbit that was deflected, I don’t know, by the Chinese, by the Russians, by chance. You know, all of these things happening.” (MovieWeb, January 2022)
“I’ve got a really beautiful little nugget of a role playing an entertainment news host, which was very fun. But, you know, I guess that we all wanted to be part of it.”

Quotes from Others

Adam McKay:
— “I liked that it was a comedy. I liked that it was big and ridiculous. I liked that it wasn’t doomsday talk, that it wasn’t so dark and shadowy. And I also thought, if you look at the last 10 years, there haven’t been a lot of comedies made. And I think part of that is because the world is so upside down and twisty-turny. And I thought one thing maybe we can all agree on, regardless of your political beliefs or your religious beliefs or whatever, is that the world is crazy right now. And so it was heartening when we started screening the movie to see, in fact, that was the case, that people across the political divide were laughing at this depiction of the world as a crazy, narcissistic funhouse mirror.”
Tyler Perry:
— “Working with Cate Blanchett was awesome because she’s very giving. She’s a scene partner that you want to have and we just played off each other. It’s like we knew each other forever. We just met that day when we did that first scene, so it was really phenomenal.”

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in USA.
The film premiered in New York on 5 December 2021.
The film was nominated in four categories at the Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Original Score and Best Original Screenplay, more accolades here.
Cate Blanchett and the cast were nominated for Outstanding Performance by Cast in a Motion Picture at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Cate Blanchett brought her own wig since many actors were unable to get to set while the hair, makeup, and costume departments were developing the cast’s looks, so some wigs had to be sized and fitted from a distance.
As of 2022, Cate Blanchett holds the record for most Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Aviator (2004), Babel (2006), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and Don’t Look Up (2020).
As of 2023, Cate Blanchett holds the record for an actress with the most appearances in a Best Picture-nominated at the Academy Awards: Elizabeth (1998), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Aviator (2004), Babel (2006), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Don’t Look Up (2020), Nightmare Alley (2020), and TÁR (2022).
Leonardo DiCaprio spoke with real-life astronomer and film consultant Amy Mainzer.
Cate Blanchett and Leonardo DiCaprio previously worked together on The Aviator (2004).
It was Jonah Hill’s idea for his character to carry a Birkin bag everywhere, as he and the filmmakers thought it would add an absurdist touch if the President’s chief of staff carried nuclear codes around in a $30,000 bag.