Forget the future of humankind. What about the future of comedy?

“Don’t Look Up,” a new movie satire about a comet on a collision course with Earth, will test whether audiences are prepared to laugh at the threat of mass extinction.

The film is one of the season’s only comedies aimed at adults. The picture stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer...

Forget the future of humankind. What about the future of comedy?

“Don’t Look Up,” a new movie satire about a comet on a collision course with Earth, will test whether audiences are prepared to laugh at the threat of mass extinction.

The film is one of the season’s only comedies aimed at adults. The picture stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as scientists warning the planet of a looming apocalypse, with Meryl Streep as an imperious U.S. president and Jonah Hill as her smarmy son and chief of staff. An allegory for global warming, the movie mines humor from the willful obliviousness of the American public.

Adam McKay’s film, in theaters this month and making its Netflix debut on Christmas Eve, comes at a weird time for funny movies. Comedies have been in decline in recent years, their percent of movie-industry market share dropping from 19% in 2000 to 6% in 2019, according to the entertainment site The Numbers.

Mr. McKay is trying to break that streak by going as big as he possibly can: delivering a star-studded movie about the end of the planet. “Don’t Look Up” also will demonstrate how far one film can go in improving the outlook for funny movies.

Adam McKay, director and writer of ‘Don’t Look Up,’ one of the season’s only comedies aimed at adults.

Photo: Rich Polk/Getty Images

“I think you can pretty safely say that in the last five or six years, it seems like comedies have been in a very stagnant, confused state,” said Mr. McKay.

“So much of comedy is about understanding the stakes of what’s going on, understanding the parameters of relationships, and all of that is just in a blender right now,” he said. “Some people are afraid or confused or just not in a very laughing mood.”

A new slate of comedies will ensure Mr. McKay isn’t alone in his hope for a turnaround.

Judd Apatow is set to release “The Bubble,” a pandemic-quarantine spoof, on Netflix next year. Sandra Bullock will star in “The Lost City,” a jungle-adventure comedy coming in March.

Mr. McKay, who both wrote and directed “Don’t Look Up,” uses a style of comedy and realism he developed while making satires including “Vice” and “The Big Short.” A onetime head writer for “Saturday Night Live,” he broke out as a filmmaker in 2004, directing and co-writing “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” The filmmaker said he misses the days when gleeful absurdity filled the theaters.

Meryl Streep as an imperious U.S. president in ‘Don’t Look Up.’

Photo: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX

With “Don’t Look Up,” he said he wanted to bring back the doomsday comedy. The genre was made famous by classics like “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” director Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 nuclear-war spoof.

But he set the bar high given the darkness of the material. “I wanted it to be a laugh-out-loud comedy, not just a wry-smile comedy,” Mr. McKay said.

Striving for authenticity, Mr. McKay brought on asteroid-detection expert Amy Mainzer to work on the science portion of the narrative. Ms. Mainzer, a professor in the lunar and planetary laboratory at the University of Arizona, spent long stretches speaking with Mr. DiCaprio about the equations his character would cite. She said that she tweaked the fictional comet’s coordinates so that no science lovers in the audience could mistake it for a body that could actually hit Earth.

The genre has been under pressure partly because of the rise of the global film economy and the frequent failure of comedies to translate well for the international market. Action, horror and dramatic movies have added humor, checking the comedy box for theaters. With the growth of superhero franchises, studios don’t need to bet on midsize comedies.

’Don’t Look Up’ features Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio as scientists warning the planet of a looming apocalypse.

Photo: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX

The streaming revolution ought to have brought a new heyday for movie comedies, but top talent often avoided films and instead went to write and star in television shows, Mr. McKay said.

“If anything, we should be seeing an explosion of brilliant comedy, but we’re not. We’re seeing an explosion of great TV shows,” he said.

Comedies often draw niche audiences on streaming platforms where viewers can seek out their brand of humor, making it less necessary for filmmakers to go after wider audiences, said Jeff Bock,

a senior media analyst with entertainment-research firm Exhibitor Relations. A joke gone wrong can also lead to public-relations debacles for studios, while the streaming culture can be a little looser, he said.

“Above-the-line talent is moving on to the greener pastures of streaming rather than risk having their work torn apart by censors in the studio community,” said Mr. Bock.

There are exceptions, naturally, and despite the challenges, some comedies still manage to break through the static. The outcomes are especially strong for hybrids like “Bad Boys for Life” (2020 comedy/action), “Knives Out” (2019 comedy/mystery) or “Toy Story 4” (2019 comedy/animation). Movies that play on streaming platforms may turn into hits, as “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” did last year on Amazon Prime Video. However, gauging a film’s broader impact is often difficult since many streaming services don’t regularly release viewership data.

A constant challenge on the set of “Don’t Look Up” was figuring out how far to push the comedy when so much of everyday life is unbelievable, from the global pandemic to the toxic effects of social media, Mr. McKay said.

“Our world in reality is ridiculous and at the same time terrifying,” he said. “That was the tricky thing.”

A scene from ‘Don’t Look Up,’ a doomsday comedy.

Photo: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX

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Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com