Adam McKay

Chicago Bite

Adam McKay didn't get into Saturday Night Live for his talent as an actor. The producers rejected his audition in 1995 but offered him a spot in the writers' room because his scripts had an unusual comedic edge. Within three years, he was the show's head writer.

That's where he crossed paths with Will Ferrell, and that partnership defined American comedy in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Together they founded Gary Sanchez Productions. Their first big hit was Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy in 2004.

It seemed like fast-food cinema.

But beneath the crude jokes about sexist journalists was a sharp dissection of corporate stupidity. McKay used absurdity to poke fun at the power structures of his country. He repeated the formula with Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby in 2006 and Step Brothers in 2008.

And the gamble paid off.

The divorce with easy laughs

The financial world collapsed in 2008, and McKay decided he no longer wanted to film men in disguise acting like fools. In 2015, he released The Big Short. It was a risky move, since the script dealt with subprime mortgages and the global economic collapse.

He used celebrities explaining complex banking concepts from a bathtub so viewers wouldn't fall asleep. The film performed well at the box office and earned him the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The movie grossed 133 million dollars on a moderate budget.

The break with his past was complete in 2019. McKay and Will Ferrell dissolved their production company and their friendship after nearly twenty-five years of close collaboration. The cause was a dispute over casting for the series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. McKay chose John C. Reilly for a role Ferrell wanted, and the relationship ended over the phone.

They never worked together again.

An Obsession with Collapse

In 2018, he directed Vice, a portrait of Dick Cheney's rise to power. Christian Bale had to gain twenty pounds and sit through five hours of makeup sessions every day during the shoot. McKay was no longer after laughs but after the audience's outrage at political manipulation.

His films became darker and more direct. In 2021, he released Don't Look Up on a streaming platform. The movie used a falling meteor as a metaphor for inaction in the face of climate change. It earned 360 million hours viewed in its first twenty-eight days in the catalog.

McKay has a heart arrhythmia that forced him to rethink his work pace after suffering a heart attack during the editing of one of his films. That didn't slow his activism. In 2023 he announced that he was redirecting his production company, Hyperobject Industries, to focus almost exclusively on projects about the environmental crisis.

In 2024, the director began shaping a script about corruption in the American healthcare system. The estimated budget for his next production exceeds 80 million dollars, not counting marketing costs.