Adam McKay teases his Don’t Look Up follow-up, calling it a comedy/drama about “big, dirty money.” McKay first became a big-name director thanks to straight comedies like Talladega Nights, Anchorman and Step Brothers. But later he crossed over into more serious terrain with politically-charged but still sometimes wacky satires like The Big Short and Vice.

Having garnered serious Oscar attention for those two weighty comedic forays, McKay in 2021 unleashed the star-studded Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, a satire about climate change and more specifically society’s inability to wrestle with the issue. The film was of course controversial in a lot of ways, but the Academy again embraced McKay’s approach, handing Don’t Look Up four Oscar nominations including one for Best Picture. The film unfortunately came away from Oscar night without snagging a single gold trophy.

Don’t Look Up may have walked away without any gold at this year’s Oscars, but its writer-director remains undeterred. Indeed McKay is already working on a new project, which he teased during a Q&A at the recent Tribeca Film Festival. McKay briefly and somewhat vaguely described the new movie (via Deadline):

“If the last movie was about the outcome of what’s broken about us, that we’re staring at the collapse of the livable climate, this one is more about the actual arterial blocks in our hearts, what’s causing it, which is, of course, big, dirty money. And it’s a comedy as well … blended with drama, but I would overall call it a comedy.”

McKay has of course dabbled in complicated money-related matters before, having written and directed The Big Short, which tackled the 2008 financial crisis in a way that managed to be both educational and at times entertaining. Politics is obviously within McKay’s sphere of interest as well after his 2018 movie Vice took on the exploits of former vice-president Dick Cheney and his boss, president George W. Bush. But the stakes were certainly raised material-wise when McKay tackled climate change in Don't Look Up, with noted climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio starring as an astronomer trying in vain to warn the world about a looming cosmic catastrophe.

The nature of McKay’s approach of course guarantees that his movies won’t be to everyone’s taste. But as long as his films continue to garner the attention of awards voters come the end of the year, he’ll continue being given the means to explore his particular political obsessions in his particularly comedic way. Going by his brief tease, it seems McKay’s “big, dirty money” movie won’t stray too far from what he’s done in the past. It’s also a given that McKay will assemble a big-name cast as he takes on his latest subject. It remains to be seen if the new movie makes as big an impact as The Big Short, Vice and Don’t Look Up, but McKay certainly has established a brand and there will be plenty of interest – both positive and negative – when the new film finally makes its way to streaming and/or the big-screen.