25 Creatives Weaving Climate Into Mainstream Movies & TV
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- Variety's feature profiles 25 creative leaders weaving climate themes into mainstream films and TV, citing examples from HBO's "Industry" greenwashing plotline to Focus Features' "Bugonia" and Netflix's "Remarkably Bright Creatures."
- HBO's "Industry" Season 3 centered on Pierpoint & Co. bankers navigating green-tech IPOs, greenwashing and outright fraud; creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay told Variety they "swung as hard as we can for the fences," and the show has been renewed for a fifth and final season.
- Hulu's "Paradise" deliberately chose climate-related apocalypse scenarios over a "stale" asteroid plot, with writer Stephen Markley — author of climate novel "The Deluge" — on staff, even as Markley publicly laments Hollywood is "barely breathing a word" about the climate crisis.
- NBCUniversal's GreenerLight program helped 2025 productions including "Jurassic World Rebirth," "Wicked: For Good" and "Hamnet" implement significant carbon-footprint reductions, while Film Independent established the new Robert Redford Environmental Vision Award to be added to next year's Spirit Awards.
- "Abbott Elementary" creator Quinta Brunson has woven climate references since Season 1 — from carpooling and plant-based diets to a school-garden club storyline — earning the Environmental Media Association's Futures Award.
- Pixar's "Hoppers" (2026), directed by Daniel Chong, follows 19-year-old Mabel fighting her town's mayor over a woodland being bulldozed for urban development, while James Cameron's "Avatar" franchise continues to embed environmental allegory — and Cameron founded the Avatar Alliance Foundation in 2010.
- Clint Bentley's "Train Dreams" (2025, Netflix) is rooted in wildfire, deforestation and Western land transformation; Bentley and writing partner Greg Kwedar subsequently struck a Netflix features deal through their Ethos banner.
Why it matters: Climate-themed storytelling has migrated from documentaries into prestige dramas ("Industry," "Paradise"), network sitcoms ("Abbott Elementary") and tentpole franchises ("Avatar"), giving the topic reach into audiences who would never seek out a climate film — but writer Stephen Markley's quote that Hollywood is "barely breathing a word" about "the biggest story to ever unfold in human history" signals the industry itself views the gap between crisis scale and screen output as still enormous.
