Leonardo DiCaprio Said Yes To Don't Look Up Because, Climate Crisis

The actor said that the film would "start to create different conversations"

Leonardo DiCaprio said he signed up for Netflix's star-studded film about a comet threatening to wipe out life on Earth because it is an urgent analogy for the climate crisis. The dark satire Don't Look Up stars DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as astronomers whose warnings about imminent catastrophe fall on deaf ears in a starkly partisan and divided United States led by an incompetent president - played by Meryl Streep. Fresh from attending the UN COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow, DiCaprio said Adam McKay's script solved the "next to impossible" problem of making a suspenseful film about a crisis that "evolves over a century."

"How do we as a species, as a society, as a culture, politically, deal with imminent armageddon?" Leonardo DiCaprio asked a Los Angeles preview screening audience on Thursday.

"He had cracked the code, so to speak, on how to bring all the insanity that we as the human race are responding to this crisis, in a two-hour format," he said.

The film, also starring Ariana Grande, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance and Jonah Hill, hits theaters December 10 before streaming on Netflix from Christmas Eve. McKay, whose wide-ranging career spans cult comedies Anchorman and Step Brothers and satirical works The Big Short and Vice, has become one of Hollywood's most in-demand directors.