Exclusive: Don’t Look Up’s David Sirota Makes The Case For Streamers To Tackle Tougher Issues In Their Programming Choices

The Oscar-nominated Netflix hit Don’t Look Up is more than your typical disaster-flick fare. 

While on one hand it’s a well-publicized allegory for the larger message around climate change… its critical and popular success also highlights what co-creator David Sirota says is a pent-up demand in the market “for content that wrestles with difficult issues, controversial issues, issues for people in the here and now that everyone is going to have an opinion on.”

Sirota discussed the movie’s backstory, reception, and potential influence on the future of both scripted and straight-news programming across streaming platforms in an exclusive interview with TVREV this week in advance of Sunday’s Academy Awards. 

Sirota, the founder/editor-in-chief of The Lever and former speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 U.S. presidential run, collaborated with Academy Award winning director Adam McKay on the Don’t Look Up script following a discussion on political storytelling following  McKay’s 2018 satire Vice — about former Vice President Dick Cheney.

McKay had been playing with an idea around climate change, but wanted to avoid the dark, post-apocalyptic angle that just never seemed to land with audiences.

“It's kind of like there's an asteroid headed toward Earth and nobody cares,” remarked Sirota. Which, it ends up, is what kickstarted McKay on what would be the first draft of the Don’t Look Up script.

The key ingredient for the plot was time… shrinking down the timeline to a level that creates a “funhouse effect” (as Sirota put it) that magnifies the absurdity of ignoring the comet as climate change is ignored in the real world. It raises the stakes without losing the point.

The result is a piece of entertainment first, but with serious political and social themes at play. Its success may result in more streaming platforms more closely examining the lines they place between the two. 

“I think there's a tension between the platforms, and their potential feelings of wanting to be conflict averse and controversy averse,” said Sirota during our interview. “(There’s) tension between that and serving an audience that wants to be challenged (by content).”

That tension creates an opportunity for what could be considered “entertainment” content around political issues, for sure. But it also highlights how streaming can help to democratize news coverage. There are still plenty of hurdles to success no matter how good the content is, due in part to just how much content there is out there already, and the varying approaches to delivering it.

“I think that there’s clearly an underserved audience at the national level, and that there’s a big space for some national outlets that aren’t just the big legacy media brands,” said Sirota. “There’s a hunger for journalism and content that’s not so establishment, not so corporate.”

“I really do think that the notion of a purely advertising-based content platform, especially a news platform… I don't see evidence that it's doable. I think that we in the media industry, as it were, have to do the hard work of building a basic subscribership model. I think in the entertainment space, obviously Netflix, Disney+…  they've done a really good job of creating value and maximizing that.”

“There are fewer examples of that in journalism. The New York Times is paywalled and that's a success in the sense of the business model. I mean, there are some issues with paywalling news and (its effect on democracy), but I think a lot more news outlets are going to have to figure out how to build subscriber bases. And if you think that that's not part of your model — like a really robust part of your model — I think you're in for some trouble.”

Where streaming news, in particular, could run up against headwinds in the short- and long-term, however, is with regard to quality control. Sirota emphasizes that he wouldn’t advocate for censorship when it comes to streaming news, but having streaming fully opened up with every “outlet” presented on an equal playing field in terms of quality and journalism standards is also a bit of a slippery slope. In recent years, social media has (rightfully) come under fire quite a bit for this issue, while platforms fail to install the necessary fact-checking methods to weed out misinformation and stop it from spreading.

But the onus for quality news coverage to rise to the top sits directly with creators, according to Sirota. He doesn’t agree with the idea that news content has to be boring, and encourages legitimate journalism to embrace creativity and a diversity of platforms in their delivery, in order to meet audiences wherever they are.

“If the audience you want doesn’t want to eat raw broccoli, then you’re going to have to come up with different ways to feed them broccoli, right?” said Sirota. “For better or worse, that's the world we live in. And I just think if you're working in this industry, you can't pretend you don't live in that world.”

Sirota believes that streaming can be a force for good in terms of exposing truth and engaging citizens with quality content (news or otherwise), but would hesitate to declare streaming — or most things — exclusively good or bad.

“That's like asking, you know, ‘is a hammer good or bad?’” said Sirota. “Well, if the hammer is bashing my face in, it's bad. If a hammer is helping me build a house, it's good, right? So I think it's just another tool. And I think whoever takes advantage of the tool is up for grabs.”

To that end, Sirota at least sees the throughline of his career — no matter the platform — to be values-based work. Whether it’s Don’t Look Up, his written reporting, podcasting or content on other platforms, the common theme has been the value of holding power accountable and shedding light on important issues. Through reporting at The Lever and potential future projects in the TV and movie space, he views it all as part of an approach to find the largest possible audience of his work.

With an Oscar nomination already in hand, one would say so far, so good there.