Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot Studios has launched “New Exxon El Niño Commercial”, written by McKay and voiced by Woody Harrelson. The video was produced by Staci Roberts-Steele at Yellow Dot and edited by Lost Planet’s EMMY-winning editor Max Koepke (DFT St. Louis).
“New Exxon El Niño Commercial” features footage from real-life, billion dollar climate disasters, all captured in recent years.
The video is a follow up to an El Niño Warning Letter petition that McKay launched earlier this summer and which received signatures from many scientists and celebrities. When Harrelson signed, McKay decided to write “New Exxon El Niño Commercial” for Harrelson’s inimitable voice, with the aim of calling further attention to El Niño and those responsible.
Adam McKay:
“I’m glad to see oil companies like Exxon acknowledging the threat this climate supercharged El Niño poses by ducking and defecting responsibility.”
Staci Roberts-Steele, Yellow Dot Managing Director & Producer:
“Big Oil has spent precious decades and ungodly sums of money lying about its product to keep us hooked on it, and now the planet and public are facing the real bill in the form of scary, costly extreme weather. These same companies continue to kill the clean energy that is not only cheaper, but try to side-step their glaring responsibility for the increasing cascade of climate disasters. At Yellow Dot, we look to make entertaining projects to bring awareness to Big Oil’s treacherous bullshit, and to show that it doesn’t have to be this way.”
The current El Niño became the strongest ever recorded on September 27, 2026, a full two months before El Niño’s typical December peak. It has continued to strengthen in the weeks since, and is on track to become a truly unprecedented weather event.
Renowned weather and climate scientist Dr. Daniel Swain took to X and Bluesky to call the 2026 El Niño predictions “a seriously concerning outlook,” and said “we’ve never seen an event this big before in the context of our rapidly warming climate. Expect some surprises.”
