Production notes

Produced by Hyperobject Industries and Bluegrass Films, the film was announced in November 2019 and sold by Paramount Pictures to Netflix several months later. Jennifer Lawrence became the first member of the cast to join, with Leonardo DiCaprio signing on after his discussions with McKay on adjustments to the script; the rest of the cast was added through 2020.This movie came from my burgeoning terror about the climate crisis and the fact that we live in a society that tends to place it as the fourth or fifth news story, or in some cases even deny that it's happening, and how horrifying that is, but at the same time preposterously funny. After Vice was released, David Sirota asked Adam McKay to use his "superpowers of humor and writing" to create a climate change movie that would be different from the Mad Max-type post-apocalyptic films that had previously been released. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, McKay described how he and Sirota came up with the premise of Don't Look Up while discussing the existential threat of climate change and their frustration over the lack of media coverage it was receiving:I started talking to a lot of [climate] scientists. I kept looking for good news, and I never got it. Everything I was hearing was worse than what I was hearing on the mainstream media. So I was talking to [David Sirota], and we were both just like, "can you believe that this isn't being covered in the media? That it's being pushed to the end of the story? That there's no headlines?" And Sirota just offhandedly said, "it's like a comet is heading to Earth and it's going to destroy us all and no one cares." And I was like, "that's the idea!" McKay has described the film as a "blend of broad comedy" with elements of disaster films and horror films. Astronomer Amy Mainzer, principal investigator of NASA's NEOWISE mission that tracks near-Earth objects, served as an "astrotech adviser" for the film. She provided scientific advice and supported with writing scenes from an early stage of production. On November 8, 2019, it was announced that Paramount Pictures would distribute the film, with Adam McKay writing, directing and producing under his Hyperobject Industries banner. On February 19, 2020, Netflix acquired the film from Paramount and Jennifer Lawrence was cast in the film. On May 12, 2020, it was announced that Cate Blanchett had joined the film. In September 2020, Rob Morgan joined the cast. In October 2020, DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Himesh Patel, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi (Scott Mescudi) and Tomer Sisley were added. McKay wrote the part of Dibiasky specifically for Lawrence, and spent four to five months going over ideas with DiCaprio, tweaking the script before the actor ultimately signed on. In November 2020, Tyler Perry, Melanie Lynskey and Ron Perlman joined the cast. Mark Rylance and Michael Chiklis were revealed as part of the cast in February 2021. Paul Guilfoyle was announced in May. Matthew Perry was also cast and had scenes filmed with Hill that were ultimately cut from the final film due to health issues. Gina Gershon also filmed a scene with DiCaprio and Blanchett that was cut from the film. Leonardo DiCaprio received top billing on the film's posters and the trailers while Jennifer Lawrence was accorded top billing at the beginning of the film itself. This was also the case with earlier productions The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) with James Stewart and John Wayne and All the President's Men (1976) with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Principal photography was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming commenced on November 18, 2020, at various locations in Boston, Massachusetts. Part of the film takes place in New York City with Boston standing in as New York. Filming also took place in other Massachusetts cities including Brockton, Framingham, and Westborough. On February 5, 2021, Jennifer Lawrence was mildly injured during filming when a controlled glass explosion went awry. Filming wrapped on February 18, 2021.

On December 6, 2023, Adam McKay, along with Netflix, was sued for copyright infringement over Don't Look Up by William Collier, an author from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who stated that he is the original writer of the story, which was set in Baton Rouge, called Stanley's Comet, and self-published by Collier in 2012. Collier's daughter worked for Jimmer Miller Entertainment, part of McKay's management team until 2015. Collier stated that his daughter submitted the text to Mosaic Media Group and it was then received by McKay's manager. Steven Lowe, a lawyer for Collier, wrote in the suit: "Since Stanley’s Comet was received by McKay’s manager, custom and practice in the entertainment industry dictates that this constitutes receipt by McKay. Furthermore, upon information and belief, the Novel was transmitted via courier, email or hand-delivery (or via other means) to McKay himself". "The movie, like the novel, makes a strong political critique of the media, the government, and the cultural elite by showcasing their shallowness and reliance on popular opinion polls and social media algorithms", wrote USC professor of comparative literature David Roman. "McKay’s film is also full of satire and humor and — like Stanley’s Comet — moves toward the absurd. In each case, the irony drives the humor and the social critique and does so in the same style and method". Collier's lawsuit was dismissed in 2024 on the grounds that the similarities between the works were too generic to be copyrightable, and he later dropped an attempt to appeal the decision. A second lawsuit, from author Darren Hunter, was dismissed in 2025 on similar grounds.

To promote the film, on December 3, 2021, Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi released the single "Just Look Up", which is also performed in the film. The original score for the film is composed by Nicholas Britell, who previously scored McKay's The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018) and the HBO television series Succession (2019–2022); McKay served as an executive producer of the latter. He used a wide range of instrumentation that reflect varied music styles and genres. He did this so as to give a remainder on the existential crisis on the planet following a catastrophic event as well as the absurdity of how people react to it. Two of the film's most climactic pieces, titled The Launch and The End?, utilize borrowed chords (exemplified in the oscillation from D-flat major to A-flat minor) to reflect humanity's regretful handling of their looming and somewhat enchanting demise. Apart from "Just Look Up", the film also featured "Second Nature" by Bon Iver, which was released along with Britell's score album on December 10, by Republic Records, and "Doorman" by Slowthai.

On February 19, 2020, it was announced that Netflix planned to release the film in 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming and release of the film were delayed. The film premiered in New York City on December 5, 2021. It received a limited theatrical release on December 10, and began streaming on Netflix on December 24. The film made an estimated $260,000 from 500 theaters on its first day, and a total of $700,000 in its opening weekend. Don't Look Up was the most-streamed English-language film on Netflix during its first week of release with a viewership of 111.03 million hours, the second highest viewership for a movie during its debut weekend on Netflix. It was the second most-streamed-film of the week in the United States according to TV Time. Per Nielsen, the film had a viewership of 1.6 billion minutes in the United States. In the second week, it retained its first position with a viewership of 152.29 million hours, which also set the record for highest weekly viewership for any film ever on Netflix. For its first 28 days, the film culminated a viewership of 359.8 million hours, making it the second most-watched film within 28 days of release on Netflix during this period of time. By March 20, the film had been streamed in 10.3 million households in the United States according to Samba TV, including 641,000 since the Oscar nomination announcements on February 8.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 56% of 305 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Don't Look Up aims too high for its scattershot barbs to consistently land, but Adam McKay's star-studded satire hits its target of collective denial square on." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 49 out of 100, based on 52 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. The critical response to Don't Look Up made it one of the worst-reviewed films to be ever nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle praised the film: "Don't Look Up might be the funniest movie of 2021. It's the most depressing too, and that odd combination makes for a one-of-a-kind experience. ... McKay gives you over two hours of laughs while convincing you that the world is coming to an end". Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars and said: "From Streep and DiCaprio and Lawrence through the supporting players, Don't Look Up is filled with greatly talented actors really and truly selling this material—but the volume remains at 11 throughout the story when some changes in tone here and there might have more effectively carried the day". In the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang wrote: "Nothing about the foolishness and outrageousness of what the movie shows us—no matter how virtuosically sliced and diced by McKay's characteristically jittery editor, Hank Corwin—can really compete with the horrors of our real-world American idiocracy". Amit Katwala of Wired concluded that "Don't Look Up nails the frustration of being a scientist". Linda Marric of The Jewish Chronicle gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "There is something genuinely endearing about a film that doesn't seem to care one bit about coming across as silly as long as its message is heard". In a negative review, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it "A cynical, insufferably smug satire stuffed to the gills with stars that purports to comment on political and media inattention to the climate crisis but really just trivializes it. Dr. Strangelove it ain't". Peter Debruge of Variety called it a "smug, easy-target political satire" and wrote: "Don't Look Up plays like the leftie answer to Armageddon—which is to say, it ditches the Bruckheimer approach of assembling a bunch of blue-collar heroes to rocket out to space and nuke the approaching comet, opting instead to spotlight the apathy, incompetence and financial self-interest of all involved". In The Guardian, Charles Bramesco wrote that the "script states the obvious as if everyone else is too stupid to realize it and does so from a position of lofty superiority that would drive away any partisans who still need to be won over". In The Sociological Review, Katherine Cross accused the film of "smug condescension" and wrote that it "is designed to flatter a certain type of liberal viewer into feeling like they're the last sane person in the world, surrounded by morons". Reviews from right-wing publications were nearly unanimously negative. Madeline Fry Schultz of the American conservative publication Washington Examiner wrote: "McKay manages to deliver nothing more than a derivative and meandering 'satire' of capitalism, Donald Trump, and climate deniers that will be forgotten in less than six months". Kyle Smith of the National Review wrote that it "expends 140 brain-injuriously unfunny minutes... propelling low-velocity spitballs at social media, Washington, tech moguls, Trumpism, and (this detail feels thrown in last minute) anti-vaxxers". Nathan J. Robinson, editor of American progressive publication Current Affairs, believed that "critics were not only missing the point of the film in important ways, but that the very way they discussed the film exemplified the problem that the film was trying to draw attention to. Some of the responses to the movie could have appeared in the movie itself". Slavoj Žižek, writing in Compact, said that "critics were displeased by the light tone of Don't Look Up!, claiming it trivializes the ultimate apocalypse. What really bothered these critics is the exact opposite: The film highlights trivialization that permeates not only the establishment, but even the protesters". In The Guardian, Catherine Bennett viewed the film as astute and was caustic about the critical reviews. Writing for the American socialist publication Jacobin, Branko Marcetic said that the plot of the film, while absurd, does not exaggerate, noting the parallels between the film and our world, including oligarch-corrupted democracy, foolish and greedy politicians and a vapid media. Nevertheless, he pointed out that, while it is too late for the characters of the film to find the way out of their impending crisis, it is not too late for us. Journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot wrote that "no wonder journalists have slated it ... it's about them" and added that for environmental activists like himself, the film, while fast‑paced and humorous, "seemed all too real". Author and activist Naomi Klein mentioned it in her 2023 book Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by saying that "Kate's plight perfectly mirrors the bizarre contradictions of our high-stakes moment in planetary history: we are all trapped inside economic and social structures that encourage us to obsessively perfect our minuscule selves even as we know, if only on a subconscious level, that we are in the very last years when it might still be possible to avert an existential planetary crisis". Bong Joon-ho, director of Parasite, included Don't Look Up as one of his favorites of 2021.

After the film's release, numerous climate scientists and climate communicators offered positive opinions on the film. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian, climate scientist Peter Kalmus remarked: "Don't Look Up is satire. But speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it's also the most accurate film about society's terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I've seen". Climate scientist Michael E. Mann also expressed support for the film, calling it "serious sociopolitical commentary posing as comedy". In an article for Scientific American, Rebecca Oppenheimer questioned the film's use of a comet impact as an effective metaphor for climate change, given the large differences in timescale of these differing potential extinction crisis events and the nature of their impacts, but praised its depiction of science denialism and depiction of a botched attempt to address a "planet-killer" comet. Climate policy expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and McKay wrote a joint op-ed in The Guardian advocating for the value of humour in promoting action on climate change, in contrast with other media coverage. Writing in Physics World, Laura Hiscott said that this "genuinely funny and entertaining film" would appeal to scientists, who would appreciate the "nods to academia such as the importance of peer review, the 'publish or perish' problem and the issue of senior academics getting the credit for their PhD students' discoveries". One of the scenes in the film was compared on social media to a situation in Brazil. In that situation, microbiologist and science communicator Natália Pasternak Taschner criticized a news report made by TV Cultura on a live broadcast in December 2020. They told the Brazilian population to face the COVID-19 pandemic with "lightness", minimizing the risks. They also put pressure on the public to be content and uncritical of the Jair Bolsonaro administration's lack of effective response to the pandemic. Hearing about the comparisons, Pasternak thanked McKay, DiCaprio and Lawrence on Twitter, with the video subtitled in English, for the "incredible" film.