Amazon MGM Launches First Trailer for Project Hail Mary

Back in 2015, The Martian showed up on the scene like a breath of fresh air. Based on Andy Weir’s bestselling debut novel, it was gripping, funny, and—for a technically-minded, scientifically rigorous space movie—surprisingly sentimental. Ridley Scott directed, and Matt Damon headlined. The result was a critically acclaimed, box office-strong movie that won a few awards. So it was with good reason that sci-fi fans got excited when they heard that Weir’s newest book was in the works as a movie: Project Hail Mary, a 2021 bestseller that many felt was even better than The Martian.

Now that the first official trailer is out, it looks like Project Hail Mary will hit many of the same notes that made The Martian so successful: the sense of wonder at the potential of science and scientific discovery, the dogged problem-solving of a lone man in a life-or-death survival situation, the droll, self-deprecating humor of a scientifically-minded protagonist, and the big, emotionally moving themes. It also has one of the biggest budgets and some of the biggest names in filmmaking today. The concept of Project Hail Mary is huge (forgive the pun), but from the first image to the closing line, the trailer telegraphs that it’s not an expensive but forgettable spaceship spectacular: it’s the kind of visual blockbuster that’s going to be packed with big ideas. We’re talking director-crews of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, a screenplay by Drew Goddard, and a lead performance by Ryan Gosling.

It was almost inevitable that Hollywood would get involved in the adaptation of Project Hail Mary. Amazon MGM Studios bought the rights to the novel before it was even published, and even hired Goddard to write a screenplay. He’s the writer behind the excellent, faithful adaptation of The Martian, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Many fans of the novel will be glad to know that they’ll see more of the same Goddard-weird: those who worked with the directors on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or The LEGO Movie might be more surprised to find the comedic duo attached to a hard sci-fi epic. For anyone who enjoys smart humor in their space flicks, it’s an unlikely but potentially very cool pairing.

Ryland Grace is a mild-mannered middle school science teacher when he wakes up in a state of confusion, unsure of where he is or how he got there. The film wastes little time before depositing viewers into the same panicked mental state. For a moment, it seems like he could be in his bed, at home. But Grace soon looks out the window and sees that he’s not only on a spaceship; he’s many light-years from Earth. The past starts to trickle back in flashes of memory: Grace, back on Earth, clean-shaven and casually teaching students. A woman approaches him out of nowhere, her face hidden behind a mask. Her message is clear: we’re offering you a chance to save the planet from extinction, but you have to take it. You have to go with us.

Grace hesitates. Why? Because the Sun is dying, that’s why. Weir is a stickler for scientific and technical details, so the sun’s death here is an accurate representation of how the star’s fuel-burning life cycle will eventually end. But it’s not just the Earth that’s in danger: multiple other stars in the vicinity are similarly dimming, except for one (suspiciously near the Earth, as it happens). No one is sure why, but a mysterious cosmological phenomenon is almost certainly to blame, and if human scientists can’t figure out how to deal with it, the whole situation will spiral out of control. To Grace, a former molecular biologist, it seems like a no-brainer. He should be able to figure this stuff out.

But he’s not interested, not in the slightest. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” Grace tells his interviewer in one scene. “I can’t even moonwalk!” But it doesn’t matter what he thinks. Eva Stratt, a top official played by Sandra Hüller, is not put off by his reluctance. Her pitch to Grace is simple: “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us.

He isn’t alone for long, though. He soon discovers another ship is nearby, and another, non-human life form. In his typical deadpan fashion, he refers to the alien he names Rocky as a “gift from the stars.” Rocky looks very different from the form of life to which humans are used. He seems to have no limbs and is covered in yellow dots. (Rocky, it seems, is a particularly alien form of life.) But he’s not the intergalactic space invader the humans might have expected. “He’s kinda growing on me,” Grace can be heard saying in a recorded voice message. “At least he’s not growing in me, you know?” It’s a brief moment in the trailer, but there’s a moving interspecies friendship connection when Grace teaches Rocky how to do the thumbs-up.

We’ll have to wait to see whether Project Hail Mary has the heart and warmth of The Martian, but from the trailer, it looks like it will echo its predecessor in having humor and pathos to balance the more tense sequences. Gosling, Weir, and Lord and Miller all have demonstrated chops for sci-fi—and for big, funny science, in particular. For a release date already set for March 20, 2026, Project Hail Mary will have an eventful few years: those who wish to avoid spoilers can simply wait, while others will hopefully look forward to seeing how Weir translates such an ambitious, massive-scaled story to the big screen.