What’s Adam McKay have on his mind as a follow-up to 2021’s “Don’t Look Up“? At the Tribeca Film Festival last year, McKay hinted that he was working on a script all about “big, dirty money,” ostensibly about the USA’s corrupt corporate and financial sectors. That sounds like a logical next step for the guy who made “The Big Short” in 2015.
READ MORE: Adam McKay Working On Script For Next Film & It’s All About “Big, Dirty Money”
But over at Puck, Matthew Belloni has the scoop that McKay is currently pitching another project to streamers and studios. Is it the same big, dirty money movie? Maybe? Its working title, “Average Height, Average Build,” will be an allegorical dramedy about a serial killer who enters American politics so he may make the laws more murder-friendly. In allegorical terms, it wouldn’t be too hard for McKay to draw a line from serial murder and psychopathic bankers and CEOs, but that’s not confirmation this is the same project he was working on last year. Still, it all but assures McKay is done with studio comedies and wants to keep on making message movies.
And McKay still wants those message movies as star-studded as possible. The director reportedly wants Robert Pattinson in the murderous lead role, with Robert Downey Jr. as another male lead. That’s a good combo already, and considering the ensembles of his past three films, expect McKay to desire other big names for his cast list, too. But all intrigue aside, no one in Hollywood has picked up McKay’s new project. That includes Netflix, who rank “Don’t Look Up” as their second most-watched movie ever, clocking in at about 360 million total hours viewed.
So why hasn’t any major studio or streamer bit yet? Well, for one: despite 17 Oscar nods over his past three movies, McKay isn’t much of a box-office draw since he stopped making fare like the “Anchorman” flicks and “The Other Guys.” And money remains the name of the game in Hollywood; a brutal irony, if this serial killer dramedy is indeed McKay’s big, dirty money movie. But this initial reluctance could also indicate the beginning of a seismic shift to less spending throughout the Hollywood landscape. McKay wants a big, big budget for this movie, and companies like Netflix, and Bob Iger‘s Disney, have all voiced a need to cut costs in an effort to make their output higher quality overall. That’s why Netflix bailed on Nancy Meyer‘s new rom-com with a $150 million budget, and why that film is still searching for a new home.
That doesn’t mean McKay’s new project will suffer the same fate. However, Hollywood higher-ups appear to be serious about moving past the rampant spending brought on by the rise of the streaming model. A few years ago, Netflix or Prime Video would have swooped on McKay’s new movie immediately. That’s not the case any longer. But that also doesn’t mean this new allegorical dramedy won’t eventually find a studio, although perhaps with a smaller budget than McKay initially demanded. More news on this project soon.
