‘Don’t Look Up’ Breaks Netflix's Viewing Record

Variety.com: Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as a pair of scientists trying to convince the world to take an extinction-level astroid seriously, has broken records at Netflix.

In its second week on the streaming platform, the disaster movie has recorded 152,290,000 hours streamed between Dec. 27 and Jan 2, putting it right at the top of its leaderboard of globally viewed English-language films.

“Don’t Look Up,” which also stars Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill and Timothée Chalamet, was released in theaters on Dec. 10 before debuting on the platform fourteen days later.

In its first two days on Netflix it logged 111,030,000 hours viewed.

Trailing in second place for the week ending Jan. 2 is “The Unforgivable” with Sandra Bullock, which recorded 21.3 million hours viewed, followed by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut “The Lost Daughter,” which registered 18.3 million hours.

“The whole movie’s trying to just process basically the question of what the eff is going on in reality,” McKay recently told Variety of “Don’t Look Up’s” premise. Even as the asteroid hurtles towards earth, Dicaprio and Lawrence find themselves battling self-serving politicians, billionaires and media personalities to impart their message of doom.

While viewers have been flocking to watch “Don’t Look Up,” the film has divided critics.

“Shrill and self-righteous though it can be, this starry comedy is McKay’s way of raising the alarm on global warming, an issue that DiCaprio and no less a figure than ex-veep Al Gore have struggled to turn into compelling cinema,” Variety‘s Peter Debruge wrote.