March 2026 Release Set for Project Hail Mary

Ryan Gosling has a major year ahead of him. Starting with Barbie, his 2023 high-profile reunion with Greta Gerwig, the actor will star in and direct Francis and the Light, and appear in miniseries like Stillwater and RoboCop. Among all that busy work is a major new science fiction adventure, and Amazon MGM Studios has released the first trailer for Project Hail Mary.

The new movie, from writers and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, will see Gosling portray the novel’s protagonist, Ryland Grace. Grace is a former molecular biologist and now middle school science teacher who one day wakes up on a spaceship and quickly learns he is light-years from home with no memory of how he got there.

Hailed by fans of The Martian, Andy Weir’s bestselling novel Project Hail Mary is a similarly hard science and big ideas, character-focused space survival story. Weir first had success with The Martian in 2015, an adaptation that became a surprising box office and critical darling. Matt Damon starred as astronaut Mark Watney, a man left for dead on Mars and forced to use his scientific skills to stay alive.

Now, it seems Weir is getting the second adaptation he always wanted. Weir’s upcoming sci-fi novel, Project Hail Mary, was given a go-ahead before the book’s publication, with Amazon MGM Studios optioning the film rights early in 2020. Drew Goddard, known for such films as Cabin in the Woods and for adapting The Martian, was given screenplay duties early on and came on board to work with directors Lord and Miller.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller might not be the first names that come to mind when you think of hard science or space adventures. (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or The LEGO Movie don’t exactly spring to mind.) But the husband-and-wife directing team has a track record for bringing light to some of the weightiest of sci-fi stories. And based on early production, Project Hail Mary will also find plenty of room to breathe and, if the trailer is any indication, find a little humor and heart in the vast blackness of space.

Project Hail Mary is, at its heart, a story of survival. Set in the not-too-distant future, Grace has been stranded millions of miles from Earth. He wakes up in a spaceship with no knowledge of where he is and no clue as to why he’s there. The universe doesn’t give him much time to piece things together either. As he floats through the ship, trying to grasp what’s happened, the gravity of the situation becomes clear. He’s hundreds of miles away from any kind of help.

Grace does eventually manage to solve his immediate problem (what the heck is going on and why is he in space? ), as several flashbacks through a bearded Grace’s prior life on Earth tell the tale. Grace, we learn, was recruited for a secret space mission by the space agency, led by high-ranking official Eva Stratt (played by Sandra Hüller). Stratt makes the case for a volunteer to investigate what NASA is calling a cosmic epidemic. “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us,” she states. “If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct.”

Grace hesitates (at one point in the trailer, he holds a sign that says “no”). “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” he quips. “I can’t even moonwalk!” But when his career as a teacher and the future of his students are also on the line, he has little choice but to sign on the dotted line.

Grace’s mission is to solve a devastating cosmic mystery. The Sun is dying, the trailer informs us, and the light from other nearby stars is dimming. Only one star is shining, and no one knows why. As one NASA official says, “We think it’s some cosmic phenomenon.” Grace, in his former job as a molecular biologist, might have a shot at solving the mystery. He quickly trains up for a space mission, but it’s an expensive and time-consuming process, and once Grace is gone, nothing can go wrong, so they tell him.

The grumpy scientist is ready for the mission, but the preparations are quickly over. Grace is rocketed into space, and within hours, is millions of miles away. After some traumatic events during the launch sequence (it’s a wonder the trailer was able to capture the movie’s R rating), Grace wakes up to find he is in the one-man spaceship he started in, very much on his own. Grace was one of three astronauts to have been launched into space, but the other two members of the crew have died in space. The casting of the Russian astronaut crewmate, Milana Vayntrub as Olesya Ilyukhina, makes a pit parent.

Grace’s loneliness is a temporary condition, however. He quickly makes contact with another ship. He isn’t alone in the universe after all. He’s also not alone with life. While humans have yet to make contact with any alien life forms, the alien Grace discovers is a single-cell organism unlike anything seen on Earth. Grace quickly names him Rocky (also an alien familiar to many) and teaches him, via a message left for rescue crews, the timeless thumbs-up gesture.

Project Hail Mary has not yet been rated, but this seems a little too R-rated for children (the upcoming Barbie notwithstanding), so expect it to fall in the 12-14 age range, with an early “R” indicating a more teen-focused affair. The next month or two could be a busy time for the trailer, with The LEGO Star Wars Movie, Barbie, and Jurassic World: CampsiteKids all opening the door to more detailed trailers or releases. But no matter when or what is released next, if Weir’s novel has taught us anything, there will be science to ground it all.