Over the past week or so, there have been multiple stories about the reasons behind the professional breakup of producing partners, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. The duo created the popular production company, Gary Sanchez, to only eventually go their separate ways. And apparently, it is all the result of a casting issue with McKay’s upcoming HBO Laker’s drama series. But what has been missing from all of this reporting, at least in McKays’ estimation, is talk about his upcoming film, “Don’t Look Up,” and the serious issue it attempts to tackle.
Speaking to THR, Adam McKay talked about the reporting surrounding his relationship with Will Ferrell and how it has taken away from the important message of “Don’t Look Up.” In the filmmaker’s view, this is all just a sign of the times.
“It’s kind of crazy to see how much has been reported on this,” said McKay. “We made ‘Don’t Look Up’ to hopefully get people talking about the climate crisis — literally the biggest threat to life in human history — and to see so much made about two comedy guys not talking about a TV show is a scary sign of our times. I love Ferrell. Always will. I had the best, most fun run of my life with him. Yes, I wish I had talked to him about it out of respect, but we were both focused on our new companies and life just took over.”
In addition to talking about his relationship with Will Ferrell, McKay also talked about why he ended up stepping away from regular comedy films in the 2000s and has focused more on satire and drama, with features such as “The Big Short” and “Vice.”
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“More and more, I started realizing the world was shifting away from the golden age of comedy we had from the late 1990s through the 2000s,” explained the filmmaker. “The themes of those comedies were about sort of empty-suit white guys, and that’s what Will and I riffed on. That’s what really made us laugh. But then you started to see the ravages of that culture, and it wasn’t so funny anymore. Big, powerful tectonic stuff started to happen: the financial collapse, the rise of the extreme right-wing, the climate crisis, and the soaring income inequality. It became almost bizarre to do those old-style comedies and didn’t make sense at that point.”
You can see the transition take place in the McKay-directed feature, “The Other Guys,” which stars Ferrell. In that film, which is played like a traditional action-comedy, you can see how McKay put in a healthy dose of social commentary, particularly when it comes to the financial institutions in the United States. The ending of the film is actually much more explicit in its messaging. And after the highly-successful “Anchorman” sequel, which followed “The Other Guys,” the relationship between Ferrell and McKay on-screen ended.
But with all that said, McKay’s latest film, “Don’t Look Up,” is all about climate change. So we should start talking about that, right? You can watch the film when it hits theaters this week and eventually on Netflix on December 24.
