Based on real events that haven’t happened - yet. "Don't Look Up" in select theaters December 10 and on Netflix December 24.

How a real NASA patch anchors Netflix's 'Don't Look Up' in reality

"Talking about your office, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, you've got the patch there. In fact, I was observing a little Latin phrase at the bottom, what does that say?"

"'Hic Servare Diem,' which means 'Here to save the day.'"

That exchange, between a NASA commentator and a scientist in the agency's planetary science division, took place during a live broadcast leading up to the launch of NASA's first mission to deflect an asteroid. But it could have easily fit into the new, satirical science fiction film, "Don't Look Up," which lands on Netflix on Friday (Dec. 24).

When the pandemic hit, it was probably the strangest six months of my life, seeing an actual disaster unfolding across the world and seeing beat after beat in the script come true. I started wondering, "Do we need to even make this anymore?" But I remember turning off the news one night and re-reading the script, and my very first thought was, "It's not crazy enough." It actually read a bit dry compared to what was actually happening. So I tweaked everything to be 15 percent crazier than it was before.

We went back out to all the actors and miraculously, they were still on board. In fact, they wanted to do this movie more than ever, quarantine bubbles and all. One right after another, the answer was still yes, and in fact, the break gave us more time to kick around some other ideas for everyone's characters. I started realizing that people wanted to do something that reflected what we were all living through. You could feel it. They wanted to laugh. You could tell everyone was hungry for a healthy, positive, joyful way to process the pothole-ridden road we've been driving down 100 miles an hour.

It depicts the ways in which global warming will wreak havoc on the planet if nothing is done to combat the climate crisis. And, it all boiled down to this idea I just couldn't shake: We all know how to react when there is a killer with an ax, or when your house is on fire, but what the author David Wallace-Wells was writing about was a million times worse. How do we get people to realize this is a clear and present danger? How close does that danger have to be for us to have the proper response? I felt like I needed to write this script.

Then over the course of the next few weeks, this great little analogy kept popping up in all my conversations, including one with David Sirota, a journalist I've known for years: It's like a comet is going to hit Earth and no one cares. And at one point, I said, "That's it. That's the movie." Sometimes it's as simple as that.