Film director-producer Adam McKay to be honoured with Oscar Wilde Award

Academy Award-winning writer-director-producer Adam McKay is set to be honoured at the US-Ireland Alliance’s Oscar Wilde Awards on March 24th, 2022.

The Santa Monica event takes place on the Thursday before the Academy Awards, with J.J. Abrams resuming his annual role as emcee.

McKay’s upcoming work is the much-anticipated Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio. Don’t Look Up tells the story of two low-level astronomers who must go on a giant media tour to warn of an approaching comet that will destroy Earth. The film will open on December 10th and will be available on Netflix from December 24th this year.

Announcing the first honouree in what is the 16th year of the popular event, Trina Vargo, founder and president of the US-Ireland Alliance expressed her excitement at the new award.

“We’re thrilled to be honouring Adam," Vargo said in a press release. "A great storyteller, of course he’s Irish. On the maternal side of his family, Adam has roots in Cork, and his paternal side are from Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. He even has a home in Ireland.”

McKay’s 2018 feature Vice, starring Christian Bale and Amy Adams, went on to receive eight Academy Award nominations, six Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations, and a DGA nomination for McKay.

In 2015, McKay and Charles Randolph adapted Michael Lewis’s New York Times best-selling book, The Big Short. Starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, the film earned deserved critical acclaim as well as Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture and won the 2016 PGA for Best Picture.

McKay also nabbed Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Director, and he and Randolph won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards, BAFTA, WGA and USC Scripter Awards.

Recent film work includes his role as an executive producer on Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart (2019), Netflix’s hit show Dead to Me (2019) and writer/director Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers (2019) - starring Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu.

Upcoming film projects include The Menu, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes from director Mark Mylod for Searchlight Pictures. He also served as an executive producer for FRESH, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan from director Mimi Cave with a screenplay from Lauryn Kahn. His production credits extend to new film Bad Blood, set to tell the story of Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes. Jennifer Lawrence stars in the flick.

For television, McKay worked as an executive producer on the critically acclaimed HBO show Succession. McKay also directed the pilot, for which he won the 2018 DGA Award for Drama Series. The show won the 2020 EMMY and Golden Globe for Best Drama Series.

Upcoming television projects include the previously announced HBO drama series Untitled Lakers Project, and a limited series based on Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown’s book about Jeffrey Epstein. McKay and Bong Joon Ho are partnering to develop an HBO limited series inspired by Bong Joon Ho’s Academy Award Best Picture Parasite.

McKay’s production company, Hyperobject Industries, has a wide-ranging focus from comedies, dramas, horror, documentaries, and documentary-series, as well as politically charged and challenging subjects.

McKay made his name in the comedy world as a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade. In 1995, McKay and Will Ferrell started on the same day at Saturday Night Live, where he became Head Writer. McKay and Ferrell’s time at SNL led to classic collaborations such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) followed by Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006).

McKay contributed hugely to Step Brothers (2008), The Other Guys (2010) and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013). He has also produced Get Hard (2015), Daddy’s Home (2015), Daddy’s Home 2 (2017), and Welcome to Me (2015).

Screen Ireland is sponsoring the Oscar Wilde Awards this year. The national development agency supports Irish content across all screens; fostering Irish artistic vision and creative talent in film, television, and animation.