In that sense, Don’t Look Up is less impressive than, say, The Unforgivable or Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed but 3.5-hour and action-lite The Irishman.
This was (again, no moral judgments) Netflix plucking what, not unlike the Knives Out sequels, might have been an old-school theatrical hit.
This wasn’t a film “saved” from a likely commercial box office death. You had DiCaprio in a star-studded comedy from a marquee director with an easy elevator pitch, halfway decent reviews (online discourse aside, 55% rotten and 6.2/10 average critic score on Rotten Tomatoes is mixed) and the promise of cinematic escapism or a good time. Don’t Look Up looked on paper like a winning theatrical package. Don’ t Look Up allegedly cost around $110 million, with $30 million going to DiCaprio and $25 million going to Lawrence (no conventional theatrical release means no backend bonuses).
#Dont look up netflix movie
Just a month later, Leonardo DiCaprio proved that he is the last old-school movie star in town by powering a 2.5-hour, grimdark $150 million western The Revenant to $184 million domestic and $535 million worldwide right alongside The Force Awakens.Īnd just two summers ago, DiCaprio pushed Quintin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (a 2.5-hour, action-lite dramedy about late-1960’s Hollywood costarring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie) to $141 million domestic and $375 million worldwide (without China) on a $90 million budget. That wasn’t great for the $60 million flick, but just six years ago McKay’s The Big Short (a star-studded comedy about the home mortgage crash) earned $133 million on a $28 million budget. Adam McKay’s Vice, starring Christian Bale as Dick Cheney, earned $76 million worldwide.
What makes Don’t Look Up different is that I’m pretty certain that, especially in non-Covid circumstances, it would have been a theatrical hit. Kevin Hart was still a draw as recently as The Upside in early 2019, so the success of Fatherhood and True Story is more complicated.
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