After taking a break from acting (besides the contractually obligated Dark Phoenix), Jennifer Lawrence has a pair of exciting projects lined up. There’s her previously-announced, still-untitled first feature for A24, which director Lila Neugebauer called “an intimate film that wants to be close to the bone and wants to be quite personal,” and now comes word that she’ll star in a Netflix comedy written by Oscar winner Adam McKay.
Don’t Look Up follows “two low-level astronomers who embark on media tour to warn mankind of an approaching asteroid that will destroy planet Earth,” according to Variety. McKay, who will direct and write the screenplay, said in a statement that he’s “so thrilled to make this movie with Jen Lawrence. She’s what folks in the 17th century used to call ‘a dynamite act.’ And the fact that Netflix sees this movie as a worldwide comedy sets the bar high for me and my team in an exciting and motivating way.” Based on the synopsis, it appears to be a return to McKay’s broad comedy after he tackled the financial criss in The Big Short and Dick Cheney’s rise to power in Vice, for which he was nominated for Best Director (even though he should’ve won for Anchorman).
Working with McKay must be a dream come true for four-time Academy Award nominee Lawrence, who has called Step Brothers (which he co-wrote with his former Funny or Die partner Will Ferrell) one of her favorite movies. Lawrence is presumably playing one of the “two low-level astronomers,” and if so, please let John C. Reilly play the other.
(Via Variety)
