Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio plays an astronomer in the upcoming Netflix film Don’t Look Up and the actor says that it was a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for him. In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence’s characters have six months to make the world care about a Mount Everest-sized comet that’s heading towards Earth but it proves to be quite a comical ride.
Talking about the film, The Revenant star said in a statement that he has often “looked for a film that had an environmental undertone to it and what Adam did was so brilliant, using the analogy of a giant comet heading towards Earth and showing how the human race would react to it from a political and scientific level, which I had never seen before.” DiCaprio explained that he has always enjoyed dark comedies. “I’m a huge fan of a lot of these films that came from the ‘60s and ‘70s — Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, certainly Network and, of course, Dr Strangelove, which talked about the Cold War through dark comedy,” he said.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers in the Adam McKay film and they both consulted Dr Amy Mainzer, an astronomer and climate change scientist. In fact, DiCaprio credits Mainzer for helping him with his role. “I must’ve had 100 conversations with her. I’ve spoken to many climate scientists, but our discussions were taken from the viewpoint of an astronomer. It was amazing to see the parallels in their thinking,” he said.
Apart from DiCaprio and Lawrence, Don’t Look Up also stars Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Timothee Chalamet and Rob Morgan among others. The film releases on Netflix on December 24.
