The Martian’s Screenwriter Returns for Project Hail Mary

Back in 2015, we all fell for The Martian. Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling debut novel was gripping, funny, and surprisingly, achingly sincere. A critical darling with strong box office numbers and a couple of awards to boot, when word got out that another Weir adaptation was in the works, this time of 2021’s Project Hail Mary book bestseller, fans of smart and character-driven sci-fi had every reason to rejoice.

Thankfully, the first official trailer, released by Amazon MGM Studios, indicates that Project Hail Mary will balance science, science, survival, and a sense of humor just like its predecessor did. Bigger ideas, even bigger budget, and more spaceships to infinity and beyond, it’s safe to say this is a space adventure for those who like to ponder big-budget action in cosmic terms. Plus, if Ryan Gosling, Drew Goddard, Phil Lord, and Christopher Miller had their way, it would also be a film that’s going to surprise you.

The studio got in on the game early, acquiring the movie rights to Project Hail Mary even before Weir’s book officially hit shelves. First up on the workbench, as the movie rights holder, was to lock in Goddard to take over the screenplay adaptation process. A nod back to the first Martian will have fans remembering the smart work by Goddard on the last adaptation of Weir’s work. He was up for an Academy Award for his efforts. But ultimately, returning Goddard to the helm of Weir’s fiction was a no-brainer. The co-director pair-up of Lord and Miller, the comedy duo behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie, may not seem like the go-to pick for hard science fiction films, but with their track record of comedic timing and heart at the center of their action, Project Hail Mary might be a great chance for the directorial power pair to prove their mettle.

Ryan Gosling plays the main character, a mild-mannered middle school science teacher who has no memory of how he came to be where he woke up. Grace (Gosling) is at the center of the film’s action as he processes the alien world around him. As the film begins, we find out, along with him, that he is, in fact, not at home at all. He’s light-years from Earth. “My apartment?” he mutters in a voiceover. “It would be impossible for me to be at my apartment.” In flashbacks, we see a clean-shaven Gosling back on the planet where he’s a popular science teacher for an assortment of precocious middle school kids. In one of the cut scenes, Grace is approached by an unknown agent who pleads his case for a mission with no other purpose than to save the planet and human life as we know it.

The problem is that the Sun, along with three other nearby stars, has been slowly dying. Scientists all over the world don’t understand why all four of those stars are inexplicably dimming, but there’s one shining light that burns even brighter, and they think a freak cosmic occurrence is to blame. As a former molecular biologist, they think Grace might be the missing key to cracking the case.

Grace may have been an interested party at one point, but after the fact, it’s all turned sour. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” he jokes to a team in the trailer. “I can’t even moonwalk!” Grace’s reluctance may be heartfelt, but to Eva Stratt, a superior-level executive played by Sandra Hüller, it doesn’t matter. “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct,” she bluntly states. Grace can’t help but take the deal once he finds out that the sole mission may be one where his students, the planet, and he all perish.

After being injected with the know-how to keep him going on a very long journey, he soon finds out that while he’s launched on his own, he’s not alone. Upon awakening in the middle of space somewhere, he can’t help but wonder if Grace is alone. Someone is running the light show on an emergency frequency. There was a crew of three before him, but according to casting details, Milana Vayntrub is on board playing Olesya Ilyukhina, one of the Russian cosmonauts who perished along the way, possibly in the journey to Earth. Grace’s memory is foggy enough not to have any details of how this happened.

A Space Epic About Survival, Mystery, and Interspecies Friendship

The teaser for Project Hail Mary, if the trailer is anything to go by, will deftly manage the sci-fi high wire act of balancing very real danger with surprise humor and a touch of heart. Gosling’s understated acting chops, Weir’s command of utilizing hard science to support characters that you can relate to on every level, and the legendary comic stylings of Lord and Miller’s directorial approach will no doubt make for a worthwhile sci-fi film.

A release date is also already in place. If you want to avoid any potential spoilers, you have a long wait as Project Hail Mary will release on March 20, 2026. If you’re dying to see the movie but want to check out the source material first, we’ve you’ve also got a while. Either way, Project Hail Mary is primed to be one of the decade’s buzziest sci-fi films. Whether or not it lives up to the book remains to be seen. But it seems to have promise. As the trailer would have you believe, this is one mission well worth following.