Don’t Look Up Director Making A Movie About January 6 Riots
Adam McKay, who recently came out with Don't Look Up, has his eyes set on a movie about the January 6th riots at the US Capitol
This article is more than 2 years old
Adam McKay has a knack for putting together movies about big events. Sometimes they are true stories, putting a new twist on something that shifted a particular landscape. And other times they are just pseudo-comedies being used as metaphors for other world-changing issues. He did as much recently with Don’t Look Up on Netflix. And now the director and producer has his eyes set on another major event in American history. Deadline is reporting that Adam McKay is producing an upcoming movie about the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots that have remained a major political talking point over the last year-plus.
The script for this project is working under the title J6 and is being shopped to studios. It is apparently going to follow the events of January 6th and the mob that overtook the United States Capitol as they sought to overturn the election of President Joe Biden. Many were supporters of Donald Trump and the events of the day turned ugly. The crowd stormed the building with a number actually getting inside. In the end, hundreds of people were injured and there were even some deaths as a result of the crowd getting out of hand. It will be interesting to see how Adam McKay and company handle this story. The guy has a penchant to turn things on the comedic side at times, but he also does understand the serious nature of things as well. It looks like this story will be the latter, taking a hard look at the events of the day.
Along with Adam McKay, Billy Ray is set to direct the film. The latter as directed a few other feature films before with Breach and The Secret in the Their Eyes. And he’s had his hand in a number of major scripts like Captain Phillips, Gemini Man, Richard Jewel, and Terminator: Dark Fate to name a few. He’s also working on the upcoming Devil in the White City series. Apparently, Ray had traveled to Washington DC in the days following the January 6th riots and interviewed a number of folks close to the situation. After that, he sat down to write the script about the day and shopped it to Adam McKay’s production company Hyperobject Industries.
Adam McKay is fresh off bringing Don’t Look Up to Netflix late last year. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as astronomers who have discovered a comet that is going to strike Earth in short order. But the crux of the movie comes from the insane nonchalance this news is met with by members of the United States government and others. The movie is meant to allude to the threat of global warming and climate change disaster that is looming on Earth right now but not being treated as a direct threat. The movie received mixed reactions from critics and is currently sitting at 55% on Rotten Tomatoes.
There isn’t a clear timeline on when Adam McKay and Billy Ray will get underway with J6. Once it lands with a studio we are likely to see production really ramp up. In the meantime, McKay is set to bring the series Winning Time: The Rise of the Laker’s Dynasty to HBO this March.
