‘Thrash’: Adam McKay & Kevin Messick On Climate Chaos, Shark Horror, & Why Reality Is Catching Up To The Movies [The Discourse Podcast]

Adam McKay and Kevin Messick have spent the last decade-plus pinballing across genres with a kind of morbid curiosity about our current hellscape. One project dissects the financial system (“The Big Short”), another stares down extinction with a grin (“Don’t Look Up”), and another turns boardrooms into bloodsport (“Succession”). So no, a lean, camp-tinged shark thriller isn’t the obvious next step at first. But “Thrash” actually feels like a similar thesis slightly obscured by a shark costume: what happens when systems strain, snap, and spill into chaos?

On this episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo is joined by Adam McKay and Kevin Messick, the producers behind “Thrash,” a storm survival movie that starts in a recognizable climate-disaster lane and then, with a sly smirk, tips over into something sharper, stranger, and a little meaner. The hook, at least at the start, is that balance between plausible and pulpy.

“When [Director Tommy Wirkola] pitched it to us, it seemed like a heightened reality,” McKay said. “But now it’s actually happening. They just had a rash of shark attacks in Australia, tragically, because of climate-fueled, historic flooding. It’s crazy that from when he pitched it to us, it’s now becoming a stone-cold reality.”

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That idea of something feeling just barely exaggerated is what pulled them in. Not full fantasy. Not parody. A story that plants its feet in reality and then nudges the dial until it starts to feel uncomfortable.

“It’s grounded before it lifts off into Tommy’s kind of heightened craziness,” Messick said.

That lift-off is where the movie really finds its personality. Wirkola leans into the chaos in ways that shouldn’t work on paper but click on screen, the kind of tonal gamble that either collapses or crackles.

“I think there’s no one other than Tommy Wirkola that would have a woman giving birth in water with sharks, taking a piece of driftwood and cutting her own umbilical cord before delivering a one-liner,” Messick said.

That mix of sincerity and insanity isn’t accidental. It’s the operating system, and it runs straight through how McKay and Messick think about storytelling at Hyperobject Industries.

“We started this company with the idea that we are living in historic times,” McKay said. “There are stories that need to be told that aren’t a part of the traditional kind of Hollywood narratives. The whole mission of the company was to mash up genres, like a completely plausible scientific premise that then goes into the realm of absurdity.”

For McKay, the real-world inspiration isn’t abstract. It’s specific, it’s recent, and it’s accelerating.

“You’re seeing a lot of strange apex predator behavior,” he said, pointing to warming waters, droughts, and disappearing food sources. Off the coast of California, they’re having three times more sightings of great white sharks because the water is so warm.”

In that context, “Thrash” stops reading like a wild premise and starts feeling like a slightly sped-up version of headlines you half-remember from last week. Even audiences seem to be picking up on that.

“When we were previewing the film, audiences didn’t question the concept,” Messick said. “There was one woman, she’s like, ‘I’m from North Carolina. This could happen.’”

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That reaction points to the connective tissue between this and McKay’s broader work. Financial collapse, media dysfunction, environmental breakdown — different arenas, same curiosity: what do systems look like when the pressure finally shows?

“Scientifically speaking, not to mention emotionally, we’re living in a time of rapid change, degrees of collapse, upheaval,” McKay said.

And if the film takes off, there’s no shortage of directions it could go next.

“The idea of telling the story of nature out of balance… “You could do an endless amount [of sequels],” McKay said.

“Thrash” hits Netflix on April 10th. You can listen to the full conversation with Adam McKay and Kevin Messick below:

The Discourse is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, Bingeworthy, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.

Mike DeAngelo

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Entertainment journalist, podcaster, and host of The Discourse and Bingeworthy podcasts, with bylines at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire.

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