About Us
Yellow Dot Studios is a non-profit media studio founded by Adam McKay, the Academy Award-winning writer, director, and producer known for Netflix’s second most watched film of all time Don’t Look Up, as well as Vice, The Big Short, Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, and television shows Succession and Winning Time, to raise awareness and mobilize action on the climate emergency.
We create entertaining, memorable, and scientifically accurate digital media and videos to challenge the decades of disinformation pushed by oil companies and amplified by large swaths of elected leaders and the media. We aim to motivate more people to participate in this conversation, and push for the urgently needed action we could be taking.
“Yellow Dot” is the sun, the 4.6 billion year old ball of nuclear fusion that is cooking us under the rapidly thickening blanket of Big Oil’s heat-trapping pollution — but also sending to Earth 10,000 times more energy every day than is used by all of humanity, thereby providing more than enough (free, clean) energy to replace what we use from the fossil fuels that are killing us.
Yellow Dot is funded by philanthropists, commissioned work, and regular people. We aim to support the creatives, organizations, scientists, and individuals who are similarly allied with the cause of continued human existence on Earth. If that’s you and you want to work together, please get in touch.
PRESS
TEAM
Adam McKay is a writer, director, and producer of films including Don’t Look Up, one of the most successful Netflix movies of all time; The Big Short, for which his screen play earned an Academy Award; Vice; Anchorman; Step Brothers; and Talladega Nights. He is Executive Producer of TV shows including Succession, Winning Time, and Game Theory with Bomani Jones. McKay made his name in the comedy world as a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, before becoming Head Writer at Saturday Night Live, and co-founding website and production studio Funny or Die, which, he would like the oil executives to know, was not actually intended as a literal directive.
An alumni of Vassar College as well as Second City and IO Chicago, Staci Roberts-Steele has acted in shows including Parks and Recreation, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, 90210, and in the filmVice, while producing numerous political and comedy videos at Funny or Die. She was co-producer at Hyperobject Industries since 2018, until transitioning to Managing Director of Yellow Dot. At Hyperobject, she produced the spoof Chevron ad, and co-produced Don’t Look Up, also appearing on-screen in the film, and producing the Webby and Ambie nominated companion podcast, Last Movie Ever Made.
Anna Wenger is a 5-time Emmy-nominated producer known for Billy on the Street, Between Two Ferns, and Sarah Silverman: We are Miracles. Former VP of Production for Funny or Die, Wenger most recently finished a stint showrunning 3 seasons of CBS’s educational STEM series, “Mission Unstoppable.”
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities. She co-edited the bestselling climate anthology All We Can Save, co-founded The All We Can Save Project, and co-created the Spotify/Gimlet climate solutions podcast How to Save a Planet.
Brit Badduke studied film & television and environmental policy at Boston University. Before Yellow Dot, she worked as a creative executive in Jenji Kohan’s production company, Tilted, and worked on shows including Orange Is The New Black, Glow, Teenage Bounty Hunters, and Worn Stories. Prior to working in TV development, Brit cut her teeth in physical production on shows such as American Crime Story and Sneaky Pete.
David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential P.R. people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media and advertising techniques for social change. He recently published The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years As A Progressive Agitator.
Elijah Zarlin is a strategist, storyteller, and organizer. His campaigns have been featured in the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, CNN, The Atlantic, Harpers, and more. He wrote emails for Barack Obama on the 2008 Obama campaign, and shortly thereafter got arrested protesting President Obama’s inaction on the Keystone XL pipeline. Twice. His climate work began at Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and This is Reality, at 387 ppm.
CONTACT
Press Inquiries:
Samantha@paulawoodsconsultants.com, Paula@paulawoodsconsultants.com
All others:
yellow@yellowdotstudios.com