Project Hail Mary is a 2026 science fiction film directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, written by Drew Goddard (his second Andy Weir adaptation after The Martian), and starring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace — a middle school science teacher and former molecular biologist who wakes up aboard an interstellar spacecraft with no memory of who he is or why he's hurtling through space. [1][2]
The supporting cast includes Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt, the project's ruthless director, and Lionel Boyce in a supporting role. [1] But the real star — the one audiences will be talking about long after the credits roll — is Rocky: a five-limbed, faceless, rock-skinned alien who speaks in whale songs and has the emotional vocabulary of an anxious fourteen-year-old boy who really wants to be invited to the party. [3][4]
Grace is the sole survivor of a three-person crew sent to the Tau Ceti system, 11.9 light-years from Earth, on a one-way suicide mission. A mysterious substance called astrophage is dimming the Sun, and Grace must solve the riddle before Earth freezes. The catch? The ship can only carry enough fuel for a single trip — any discoveries must be sent home in small space probes. [2]
The film premiered at Empire Leicester Square in London on March 9, 2026, and was released on March 20 by Amazon MGM Studios in the United States and Canada, with Sony Pictures Releasing International handling other territories. It was also released in select IMAX theaters with a 1.43:1 aspect ratio. [1]
Budgeted at roughly $200 million net ($248 million gross), the film grossed $684.2 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2026. [1] Greig Fraser served as cinematographer, Daniel Pemberton composed the score, and Joel Negron handled editing. [1]
In an era of limitless CGI, Project Hail Mary made a radical choice: Rocky was a real, physical puppet. [4] Designed by creature effects artist Neal Scanlan — a veteran of Jim Henson's Creature Shop who built the Porgs for Star Wars — Rocky was operated by a team of five puppeteers led by James Ortiz, a Drama Desk Award–winning New York theater artist making his first film. [3][4][5]
Scanlan's pitch to Ortiz was simple: "You're Frank Oz, and I'm making Yoda for you." [4][5]
The puppet itself was a hollow fiberglass shell with steel rods bolted into its forearms, animatronic fingers triggered by a three-finger pull mechanism ("that looked like a cheap squirt-gun pull," Ortiz said), and replacement forearms that could be swapped on the fly. [4] Each arm was a different design — different elbow joints, different color codes — a bespoke creation that evolved through months of pre-production feedback. [4][5]
Rocky had no face. No eyes, no mouth, no brow. Every ounce of emotion had to come from movement and sound. Ortiz modeled the physicality on the idea of someone who "could never really stand still — an anxious fourteen-year-old boy who really wanted to be invited to the party." [4]
For voice, Ortiz aimed for something deliberately imperfect: "I thought it shouldn't sound like the top AI you ever heard. There should be a little bit of Mr. Moviefone and a little bit of Siri, only not as clean." [3] After the fact, he realized there were echoes of Tik-Tok from Return to Oz, some TikTok voice filters, and — unexpectedly — Katharine Hepburn, whose breath-calibration technique Ortiz used to modulate the character's audio personality. [4]
45-minute improvised takes on a $190 million set. Lord and Miller asked Gosling and Ortiz to improvise long takes, "almost like it was a theater production." Ortiz says there were days of "45-minute takes of just us playing stuff." [3] In a blockbuster of this scale, that's either inspired or insane — possibly both.
The thumbs-up that became a thumbs-down. During filming, someone asked Rocky to give a thumbs-up. The puppet physically couldn't do it — its thumb pointed down instead. It became a running gag. [6]
The world's worst knock-knock joke. The onboard computer, Mary, taught Rocky knock-knock jokes. Rocky's contribution: "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "...Rocky!" That was it. The whole joke. It made Gosling "fall apart" laughing. [4]
The hamster ball. For scenes where Rocky rolls around in a transparent sphere filled with his alien atmosphere, Ortiz was given a giant plastic ball with handles. His job: run through the set pushing the empty ball, screaming Rocky's lines, and intentionally crashing into everything. [4][5] "I was just running through that space, screaming my lines and knocking into everything, trying to be a big, chaotic mess." [4]
Emma Thompson's uninvited audience. On Ortiz's very first day of filming — the New York theater artist's first day ever on a movie set — Emma Thompson happened to be visiting Lord and Miller. "No pressure," Ortiz said. "It's only a two-time Oscar winner watching your first day." [3]
The Batman Forever sweatshirt. Ortiz and Gosling discovered a shared, deep love of Batman Forever over lunch. ("You don't have enough print for me to describe how much I love Batman Forever," Ortiz said.) On Ortiz's last day on set, Gosling intercepted him with a wrapped gift: a Batman Forever crew sweatshirt. [3]
A deleted scene about dreams. There's a cut scene where Rocky can't stop talking while Grace tries to sleep, and Grace attempts to explain what dreams are. "It's such a sweet moment," Ortiz says, adding he imagines it will surface in home entertainment deleted scenes. [3]
Rocky hates Mark. While improvising, Gosling made a joke about his friend Mark. Ortiz improvised Rocky hating Mark on the spot. "We just went, 'Oh, we have to make Mark, like, six feet over there, giggle.'" [6]
The film landed with a thud in the best possible way. Rotten Tomatoes reports a 95% Tomatometer (423 reviews) and a matching 95% Popcornmeter (25,000+ verified ratings) — a rare critic-audience alignment. [7]
The Critics Consensus reads: "A visually dazzling space odyssey that's carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart." [7]
The Audience Summary is more concise: "One stellar Gosling + one arachnid-ish alien + one Hail Mary mission = lightning in a spaceship." [7]
Notable pull quotes:
The press junket yielded a bounty of good material, but a few standouts:
Collider with Steve Weintraub — Gosling admits he shot approximately 100 days of material almost entirely alone, across a six-year journey from script to screen. "It's a lot of me. It's more me than I need, than you need, than any of us need," he jokes. At one point, the solitude got to him: "I can't just do another day alone today. I need something." Lord and Miller responded by duct-taping a mop to a stand, raiding other sets for accessories, and building him a mop co-star they named Moppy Ringwald. Gosling spent the day dancing and improvising with her. It ended up in the film. [8]
The interview also surfaces Sandra Hüller's impromptu karaoke performance — she sang a Harry Styles song that became "the anthem of the film," appearing across all the marketing and trailers. Gosling heard her rehearsing in the hallway and asked her to perform it in the movie. [8]
Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused (45:23, YouTube, March 19, 2026) — Gosling's first-ever podcast appearance. The deep dive covers everything from Project Hail Mary to Star Wars, Ghost Rider, his Oscars "I'm Just Ken" performance, and his teenage encounter with Tina Turner at a movie theater (he asked her for an autograph, which informed how he treats fans today). [9]
Moviefone at JPL — An in-person interview at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Gosling discusses how Ortiz evolved from puppeteer to full scene partner: "He was just supposed to be the physical puppeteer, but he started reading the lines with me... we got to the point where we could improvise for hours sometimes off script as the characters on camera." He also reveals a deleted scene where, after too many days alone, his character "needs to make a friend out of a mop." [10]
Cinema Therapy: "Psychology of a Hero: Dr. Ryland Grace from PROJECT HAIL MARY" — Cinema Therapy's therapists break down the psychology of Ryland Grace, exploring what makes him tick as a reluctant hero, his coping mechanisms in isolation, and the friendship at the heart of the film. [17]
StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson (41:23, 3.5M views, April 2026) — Andy Weir sits down with Tyson and Chuck Nice for a deep dive into the science behind the novel and film. Weir reveals he built Rocky's entire biology around a real exoplanet in the 40 Eridani star system — one that was later found not to exist. They discuss whether an alien species could achieve interstellar travel using only Newtonian physics, and Weir explains why he cut a scene where humanity nukes Antarctica to trigger controlled global warming. The episode closes with Weir's hard-won advice for aspiring writers. [15]
StarTalk: "Alternative Aliens" with Andy Weir and David Grinspoon (May 2021) — An earlier StarTalk episode from when the book first published, featuring Weir alongside astrobiologist David Grinspoon. Weir explains astrophage's cell membrane mechanism — converting proton collisions into energy via neutrinos — and they discuss panspermia, the oxygen catastrophe, snowball Earth, and why Weir chose to make all life in the story share a common origin. Grinspoon notes that astrophage "reverse-engineers" its fuel source in a way that mirrors real geoengineering proposals. [16]
Amazon MGM Studios embedded Adam Savage and his Tested crew directly with the Project Hail Mary production. The result was four videos that double as both promotional material and genuinely excellent behind-the-scenes documentary filmmaking. [11][12][13][14]
"Adam Savage Behind the Scenes of Project Hail Mary!" (25:33, 1.1M views) — Production designer Charlie Wood gives Savage a full tour of the Hail Mary cockpit set. The set features thousands of buttons, hundreds of screens, and a lighting system with seven or eight distinct personality modes: monochromatic black-and-white for early scenes, amber for the "dawn of the film," cyan for relaxed moments, green for hostile. The entire set is built on an exoskeleton framework with extensive fabric and insulation work — Wood's drapes team cladded many of the sets entirely in stitched, grommeted, and foiled fabrics. A dedicated screen graphics artist named Mirage handled the narrative displays from day one. [11]
"Adam Savage Reviews Project Hail Mary's Spacesuit!" (22:07, 248.5K views) — Costume designers David Crossman and Glyn Dillon walk Savage through the red EVA suit, one of the first red spacesuits in a major American film. NASA consulted via Zoom on what near-future EVA technology might look like. The undersuit is an actual cooling suit adapted with latex to give it "wet suit snap," making the struggle to put it on in zero gravity feel viscerally real. FFB Effects built the hero suits, with helmet molds eventually replacing the initial 3D-printed versions. By week three of filming they needed at least four suits for different purposes — discovery shots, dressing sequences, close-ups. [12]
"How Zero Gravity Spacewalks Are Filmed in Movies" (13:41, 435K views) — Savage dons the stunt spacesuit and gets strapped into a custom rig the stunt team designed specifically for this film. Stunt coordinator Ununice calls it "the least stunty film we've ever done, but possibly the most technical film we've ever done in 30 years." The rig had to give Gosling full Z-axis freedom — somersaults, inversions, traversing the entire hull. Savage also articulates what makes the stunt team's work underappreciated: the double (Ben) has to replicate Gosling's emotional performance while suspended 75 to 100 feet from the rope operators. [13]
"How #ProjectHailMary Filmed Spacewalk Scenes" (0:52, 144K views) — A short, perfect clip of Savage in the suit on the hull set, sweating profusely: "This is officially the most fun I've ever had in a space suit. But I am so sweaty." [14]