Phil Lord and Christopher Miller co-direct Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir’s 2021 novel.
We here at Ars were big fans of 2015’s The Martian, adapted from Andy Weir’s novel of the same name. So our interest was naturally piqued when he heard about a new film, Project Hail Mary, based on Weir’s bestselling 2021 novel. Amazon MGM Studios just released the first trailer, and the movie looks great—very much in the vein of The Martian.
(Some spoilers below, but nothing that isn’t in the trailer.)
The studio acquired the rights for Weir’s novel before it was even published and brought on Drew Goddard to write the screenplay. (Goddard also wrote the adapted screenplay for The Martian, so it’s an excellent choice.) They tapped Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie) to direct and signed on Ryan Gosling to star.
Judging by the trailer, the film should follow the book fairly closely. It opens with a very hairy Ryland Grace (Gosling) waking up on a spaceship with amnesia and freaking out at being several light-years from his apartment. Cue the flashbacks, showing a clean-shaven Grace teaching middle school students before being approached about serving on a space mission to save the world. The sun is dying, as are a bunch of stars save for one, and scientists don’t know why, but since Grace is a former molecular biologist, he might be able to figure out what’s going on.
