Ariana Grande, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio and more will be in Adam McKay's apocalypse movie

By Sam Barsanti | October 18, 2020 | 9:41pm

Aux Features Film

Ariana Grande, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio and more will be in Adam McKay's apocalypse movie

Ariana Grande (Amy Sussman/Getty Images), Leonardo DiCaprio (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images), Meryl Streep (Amy Sussman/Getty Images), Timothee Chalamet (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) Image: The A.V. Club

In February, we reported that Adam McKay had sold a new movie to Netflix called Don’t Look Up about a pair of scientists going on a PR tour to tell disinterested Americans about a meteor on a collision course with Earth. At the time, our own William Hughes noted that it was basically like the “superliminal” advertising approach from The Simpsons (“Hey you, join the Navy!”) but repurposed as a climate change metaphor—though scientists being ignored as they try to tell people about the destruction of the planet isn’t so much a metaphor as it is… literally what’s going on with climate change. Again: Superliminal.

Anyway, we knew at the time that Jennifer Lawrence would star as one of the scientists, and now Billboard says she’ll be joined by so many other famous people, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Himesh Patel, Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, Kid Cudi, Ariana Grande, and Matthew Perry. DiCaprio will apparently be playing the other scientist joining Lawrence on the “we’re all going to die” tour, while Grande’s appearance will be a “cameo.” If we had to guess, we’d say she’ll be playing herself and serving as an example of the kind of thing people care more about than the meteor, which means this probably won’t be a return to the Sam & Cat or Victorious glory days of Ariana Grande’s acting career.