The cast is headlined by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, playing two low-level astronomers forced to travel around the U.S. to warn the population that a giant meteor is heading straight towards the planet and will destroy it. The two Oscar winners are joined by an insane marquee of stars: Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Rob Morgan, Ron Perlman, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Mark Rylance, and Cate Blanchett. Here’s Netflix’s official synopsis: “Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) 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 (Rob Morgan), Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). 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?!”
McKay wrote the character of astronomer Kate Dibiasky for Jennifer Lawrence, and the “Silver Linings Playbook” Oscar winner got the first read of the script. The Oscar-winning writer behind “The Big Short” had long wanted to work with Lawrence. “I’ve known Jen for awhile,” McKay said earlier this year when asked how he landed two of the biggest A-listers in Hollywood in the same film. “One of the first meetings she ever did in Los Angeles after her first movie was with me when she was like 17 years old, maybe 18 years old. She worshipped ‘Step Brothers,’ so when her agent asked who she wanted to meet…they prob weren’t happy to hear the answer: the guy who did ‘Step Brothers.’” DiCaprio was a different story, as McKay never thought a muse of Martin Scorsese would sign up for one of his movies. “It turns out he really loved the script,” McKay said. “We went back and forth on it. It was about a four-to-five-month process with us just kicking around ideas. We took a break for the quarantine, and lo and behold once we figured out a theoretically safe way to shoot this movie, he was in. I couldn’t believe it. It’s no surprise he’s fabulous in the movie.”
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