Don't Look Up is a 2021 American apocalyptic political satire black comedy film written, co-produced, and directed by Adam McKay from a story he co-wrote with David Sirota.

[1] It stars an ensemble cast featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep.

When hosts Jack Bremmer and Brie Evantee treat the topic lightly, Dibiasky loses her temper and angrily rants about the threat before she flees the scene.

When news of Orlean's sex scandal with her Supreme Court nominee Sheriff Conlon is exposed, she distracts from the bad publicity by finally confirming the threat and announcing a project to strike and divert the comet using nuclear weapons.

The mission successfully launches, but Orlean abruptly aborts it when Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular and another top donor, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars worth of rare-earth elements.

The White House agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting and recovering it from the ocean, using technology proposed by BASH in a scheme that has not undergone peer review.

When Dibiasky returns home to Illinois, her parents kick her out of the house and she begins a relationship with a young man named Yule, a shoplifter she meets at her retail job.

Becoming frustrated with the administration, Mindy finally breaks down and rants on national television, criticizing Orlean for downplaying the impending apocalypse and questioning humanity's indifference.

Mindy, Dibiasky, and Oglethorpe organize a protest campaign on social media, telling people to "Just Look Up" and call on other countries to conduct comet interception operations.

In a mid-credits scene, the 2,000 people who left Earth before the comet's impact land on a lush alien planet 22,740 years later, ending their period of suspended animation.

Other cast members include Kevin Craig West as the Secretary of State; Erik Parillo as Sheriff Conlon, Orlean's choice for Supreme Court Justice who ends up in a sex scandal with Orlean; Jon Glaser as Meow Man; Sarah Nolen as the puppeteer of Sammy; Allyn Burrows as Mr. Dibiasky, the father of Kate; and Tori Davis Lawlor as Mrs. Dibiasky, the mother of Kate.

[15] Astronomer Amy Mainzer, principal investigator of NASA's NEOWISE mission that tracks near-Earth objects, served as an "astrotech adviser" for the film.

[21] In October 2020, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Himesh Patel, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi (Scott Mescudi), and Tomer Sisley were added.

This was also the case with earlier productions The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) with James Stewart and John Wayne and All the President's Men (1976) with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

The website's consensus reads: "Don't Look Up aims too high for its scattershot barbs to consistently land, but Adam McKay's star-studded satire hits its target of collective denial square on.

"[58] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars and said: "From Streep and DiCaprio and Lawrence through the supporting players, Don't Look Up is filled with greatly talented actors really and truly selling this material—but the volume remains at 11 throughout the story when some changes in tone here and there might have more effectively carried the day.

"[59] In the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang wrote, "Nothing about the foolishness and outrageousness of what the movie shows us—no matter how virtuosically sliced and diced by McKay's characteristically jittery editor, Hank Corwin—can really compete with the horrors of our real-world American idiocracy.

[62] In a negative review, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it "A cynical, insufferably smug satire stuffed to the gills with stars that purports to comment on political and media inattention to the climate crisis but really just trivializes it.

"[64] In The Guardian, Charles Bramesco wrote that the "script states the obvious as if everyone else is too stupid to realize it and does so from a position of lofty superiority that would drive away any partisans who still need to be won over.

"[65] In The Sociological Review, Katherine Cross accused the film of "smug condescension" and wrote it "is designed to flatter a certain type of liberal viewer into feeling like they're the last sane person in the world, surrounded by morons.

Madeline Fry Schultz of the American conservative publication Washington Examiner wrote "McKay manages to deliver nothing more than a derivative and meandering 'satire' of capitalism, Donald Trump, and climate deniers that will be forgotten in less than six months.

[72] Author and activist Naomi Klein mentions it in her 2023 book Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by saying that "Kate's plight perfectly mirrors the bizarre contradictions of our high-stakes moment in planetary history: we are all trapped inside economic and social structures that encourage us to obsessively perfect our miniscule selves even as we know, if only on a subconscious level, that we are in the very last years when it might still be possible to avert an existential planetary crisis.

[80] Writing in Physics World, Laura Hiscott said that this "genuinely funny and entertaining film" would appeal to scientists, who would appreciate the "nods to academia such as the importance of peer review, the 'publish or perish' problem and the issue of senior academics getting the credit for their PhD students' discoveries".

In that situation, microbiologist and science communicator Natália Pasternak Taschner criticized a news report made by TV Cultura on a live broadcast in December 2020.

"[143] From the same journal, writer Julie Doyle remarked that, "yet, as the film critiques existing structures and systems it does not imagine an alternative set of realities, nor explain the comet's cause.

In focusing upon the fictional stories of scientists, politicians, and media celebrities, the film fails to center any marginalized voices, continuing to privilege global north perspectives, even as these are satirised.

Mede writes, "The film also illustrates that storytelling can be a promising strategy to mitigate these reservations ... showing how Mindy is advised before a TV interview that he is 'just telling a story' and must 'keep it simple.

Professor of media and communication Julie Doyle writes, "Gendered norms affect Mindy and Dibiasky's public credibility and the mitigatory comet actions they promote.

Following his own emotional outburst on TV, Mindy is subsequently recuperated through processes of celebritisation ... hailed as a 'sexy' scientist offering rational and calm advice to the viewers; becoming chief science advisor to the White House to monitor the drone activities of tech billionaire Peter Isherwell; and embarking on a sexual affair with Evantee.

"[143] The film also "references the affinity of anti-science resentment and populism, showing how President Orlean and her team slander Mindy and Dibiasky using populist rhetoric ... and gather in an Oval Office that has a portrait of the anti-establishment science skeptic Andrew Jackson.