- calendar_today August 26, 2025
First Look: Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary
Back in 2015, The Martian took movie audiences by storm. The witty, suspenseful, and—in spite of its science-fiction trappings—deceptively emotional adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2011 debut novel of the same name earned glowing reviews, solid box office returns, and a handful of awards. So when fans learned that Weir’s most recent book was to get its own cinematic adaptation, his 2021 bestseller Project Hail Mary, they had every reason to get excited.
Amazon MGM Studios just dropped the first official trailer for the film. Project Hail Mary is set to hit theaters March 20, 2026, but this trailer should help with staving off spoilers (or simply pique enough curiosity to encourage readers to check out the book in the meantime). As it is with The Martian, it seems like the same improbable combination of a deadly environment, desperation, and—perhaps most critically for readers and moviegoers alike—wit is what makes for a successful adaptation of Weir’s work.
Lord and Miller attached to Project Hail Mary in pre-publication of the novel, with Amazon MGM Studios securing the rights before Weir even published the book and ensuring that Goddard would have the opportunity to write the screenplay. Goddard of course also worked on the screenplay for The Martian, receiving an Academy Award nomination for his smart and faithful adaptation of Weir’s debut novel. Enlisting Goddard to return was an easy decision for the film’s producers. The choice of Lord and Miller to take the director’s chair over might seem strange at first, but if anything, their past work bodes well for this film’s potential to be just as serious a science-fiction story as its predecessor.
In a series of flashbacks, viewers get a glimpse of what Grace’s life was like before he boarded the ship. He is clean-shaven, healthy, and happier when in front of his class of eager students than he has been in some time. As Grace continues to put the pieces of his memory puzzle together, it becomes clear that he has been approached about an opportunity—or more accurately, a last-ditch effort to save humanity that has come in the form of a job offer. Grace has been offered a chance to be at the forefront of a mission to save the planet. The only problem? The Sun is dying.
Not just Earth’s star, but multiple other nearby stars are all going dim. Only one remains bright, and scientists have no clue why. At least, they have no clue beyond a very basic hypothesis: that a spacefaring organism has traveled to Earth from afar to save its own planet from a similar ecological disaster. It’s a mystery—and, of course, one that Grace, as a former molecular biologist, would be very well-equipped to solve.
The problem is that Grace’s enthusiasm for the offer is near non-existent. I put the not in astronaut, he complains in one scene. I can t even moonwalk! The cold, hard truth of the situation is presented by Eva Stratt (Sandra H fcller), a high-ranking official who makes the pitch simple: If you don t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct. The stakes are clear, and while they are broad enough to encompass all of humanity, they are also deeply personal for Grace because they also include the students in his class.
The ship leaves shortly after that conversation, and a series of fast-cut training montages before Grace finds himself a long way from home—and, suddenly, out of company. Grace awakens aboard the ship with temporary amnesia thanks to an antidote of the sleep-inducing substance he had used to knock himself out. The audience sees the space around him shrink and expand as he floats in zero-G while a recording of Grace explains that his temporary amnesia due to the antidote leaves him with no memory of having been joined on the journey by anyone at all. The crew has perished, either from the same condition or some unknown event before Grace took to hypersleep.
From a Glimpse of Two Sci-Fi Futures
Taken as a whole, and based on the trailer for Project Hail Mary, it seems likely that this will be another major science-fiction event in the same vein as The Martian. The science-fiction thriller movie has always been a rare space for films to let their hair down and go big, and it has often been where the medium as a whole does some of its most interesting work as an extension of long-running science fiction narratives in novels and comics. The ingredients are all there.
The potential chemistry of Gosling’s understated, laconic charm; the influence of Weir’s own idiosyncratic knack for making the most outlandish science-fiction possibilities still feel relatable on some level, and still ring true in some deeply human way; and the storytelling instincts of the directors are all recipes for a winning, big-screen science-fiction event. Add in high stakes, a compelling mystery, and some intriguing new forms of life in a universe that may not be as empty as it first seems—and, of course, the possibility of nonstop fun at the most elite levels of space science—and it s no wonder that Project Hail Mary already looks like it could be one of the best science-fiction movies of the 2020s.
The film has a release date: March 20, 2026. By that time, curious readers and moviegoers will either have an expert handle on avoiding book-based spoilers (probably from the number of questions The Martian generated about the book) or perhaps even a read of Weir’s work that Project Hail Mary will be adapting for themselves. Even in this trailer, there s enough of mystery, excitement, dread, and unexpected friendship to make the science-fiction novel s adaptation one of the most highly-anticipated science-fiction releases of the next decade.
