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.
Grace is not at all keen, insisting he's not astronaut material: "I put the 'not' in astronaut," he claims. "I can't even moonwalk!" But his objections go unheeded. "If you don't go, you die with the rest of us," his superior, Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), tells him, even as she admits it's a long shot that the project will succeed. "If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct." That includes all his students.
So Grace does a bit of space training and blasts off on a rocket, waking up several light-years later with temporary amnesia. He's alone, so clearly the rest of the crew died en route. (Another clue: the cast includes Milana Vayntrub, playing a "deceased Russian crewmate" named Olesya Ilyukhina.) Then Grace encounters an alien ship and a new life form. "He's kinda growing on me," Grace says on his video report. "At least he's not growing in me, you know?" (Oh, we know.) He calls him Rocky and teaches him how to do a proper thumbs-up. What comes next? We'll find out next year. (Or you can read the book.)
Project Hail Mary is slated to hit theaters on March 20, 2026. Yeah, we're excited about this one.
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