Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have spent their careers making chaos look effortless. In “Project Hail Mary,” they make loneliness look like a puzzle worth solving. The film, written by Drew Goddard from Andy Weir’s 2021 novel, runs 157 minutes and earns almost every one of them. It is a science fiction adventure that trusts its audience to keep up, and it rewards that trust with a friendship between a man and a rock that lands harder than most human dramas manage in half the time.
Trailer, via Amazon MGM Studios.
Ryan Gosling Wakes Up With No Memory
The setup is a locked-room mystery in deep space. Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher and former molecular biologist who wakes from an induced coma aboard the interstellar spacecraft Hail Mary with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. The ship is light years from home. The crew is gone.
Grace learns he is the sole survivor of a three-person crew sent toward the Tau Ceti system, 11.9 light-years from Earth. The film parcels out his past in flashbacks rather than dumping it all at once, and that structure works. Gosling plays confusion without mugging, then plays competence without arrogance. It is a quiet performance in a loud genre.
The mission itself is grim. Scientists discovered a “Petrova line” of infrared light stretching from the Sun to Venus. An alien microbe in that line, dubbed “astrophage,” was proliferating on the Sun’s surface and dimming it at a rate that would cause catastrophic global cooling within thirty years. Earth had a deadline and no answer.
Sandra Hüller Runs the Petrova Taskforce
Sandra Hüller plays Eva Stratt, head of the Petrova Taskforce, the international body behind Project Hail Mary. Stratt recruits Grace for his background in speculative astrobiology. Hüller gives her a hard, practical edge. She is not a villain. She is a manager of the end of the world, and she knows the math.
Grace experiments on an astrophage sample and finds it is made of unicellular organisms that absorb electromagnetic radiation from the Sun and expel it for propulsion. That discovery is the film’s first real turn. The microbe is not just killing the Sun. It is a vehicle.
The mission to Tau Ceti is a one-way trip. The ship carries enough fuel to get there and not back. Any findings would have to return to Earth in smaller space probes. The film never softens this. The crew knew. Grace, once he remembers, knew too.
James Ortiz Plays Rocky Through a Puppet
Grace encounters an alien spacecraft that docks with the Hail Mary. It is made of a solid form of xenon, which Grace dubs “xenonite.” The occupant is a rock-like, five-legged alien from Erid, a planet in the 40 Eridani A system. Grace names him Rocky.
James Ortiz plays Rocky through a puppet controlled by a team of five puppeteers led by Ortiz, dubbed the “Rockyteers.” Ortiz also provides the artificial voice assigned to the character. This is the film’s technical and emotional center, and it is not a gimmick. Rocky is a mechanical engineer and the sole survivor of his own mission. He and Grace are two stranded specialists who cannot breathe the same air and cannot see each other the same way.
Grace deduces that Eridians “see” via echolocation. He builds a machine translation system to interpret Rocky’s musical language into English. The scenes where the two of them work out basic communication are the best in the movie. They are funny without being cute, and they are suspenseful without a single explosion.
A Practical Set Built for the Hail Mary
All scenes aboard the Hail Mary were filmed on a practical set constructed for the film. Filming took place throughout 2024 in the United Kingdom, both on location and on sets. Pre-production began in 2020, before Weir’s novel was published. That long runway shows.
The ship feels like a place rather than a green screen. Corridors have weight. The xenonite docking sequence has texture. Lord and Miller keep the camera close to Gosling’s face when it matters and pull back when the scale needs to land.
The supporting cast is thinner than the premise suggests. Lionel Boyce plays Carl, a member of security personnel. Ken Leung plays Yao Li-Jie, the Chinese commander of the Hail Mary. Milana Vayntrub plays Olesya Ilyukhina, a Russian engineer on board. Priya Kansara voices Mary, the ship’s onboard computer. Malachi Kirby plays Martin Dubois, the original scientist of the Hail Mary. Liz Kingsman plays Annie Shapiro, a backup scientist. Mia Soteriou plays Dr. Browne.
These are competent performers doing necessary work. The film does not give them much to do beyond the plot’s requirements, and that is the one place where the 157-minute runtime feels like a choice rather than a necessity.
The Hard Numbers
- Title: Project Hail Mary (2026)
- Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
- Writer: Drew Goddard, based on the 2021 novel by Andy Weir
- Runtime: 157 minutes
- Genres: Science Fiction, Adventure
- Tagline: “Believe in the Hail Mary.”
- Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung, Priya Kansara, Mia Soteriou
- London premiere: March 9, 2026
- US release: March 20, 2026, by Amazon MGM Studios
- Worldwide gross: over $685 million
- 2026 rank: seventh-highest-grossing film of the year
- Score: 8.6/10
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2020 | Pre-production begins, before Weir’s novel is published |
| 2024 | Filming takes place throughout the United Kingdom |
| March 9, 2026 | London premiere |
| March 20, 2026 | US release by Amazon MGM Studios |
| 2026 | Grosses over $685 million worldwide |
The Humor and Themes Land
The film received positive reviews, with praise for Lord and Miller’s direction, Gosling’s performance, the character of Rocky, and the humor, themes and visuals. That consensus is right about the elements and slightly wrong about the emphasis. The humor is not decoration. It is how the film survives its own premise.
A story about the Sun dying and a suicide mission to another star could be unbearable. “Project Hail Mary” chooses to be curious instead. Grace does not panic. He experiments. Rocky does not despair. He builds. The film argues, without saying it outright, that the response to extinction is competence and company.
The themes are not subtle, but they are earned. The astrophage consumes and moves. Humanity, in the film’s logic, has to do the same thing but choose a destination. Stratt’s task force is international because the problem is. The Hail Mary is a long shot because the alternative is nothing.
What the Film Gets Right
The translation sequences are the film’s best argument for itself. Grace and Rocky build language from scratch, and the film lets the audience watch it happen. There is no montage shortcut. There is trial, error, and a musical vocabulary that sounds like nothing else in recent science fiction.
Gosling’s performance holds the center. He is on screen alone for long stretches, and he never plays lonely for sympathy. He plays it as a problem to solve. When Rocky arrives, the relief is real because the film earned the silence first.
The visuals are strong without being showy. The Petrova line, the astrophage, the xenonite ship — each has a clear physical logic. Lord and Miller do not use scale to intimidate. They use it to explain.
Where It Stumbles
The human supporting cast gets shortchanged. Hüller’s Stratt is the only character on Earth with real weight, and even she disappears for long stretches. The flashbacks do their job, but they never build a world as vivid as the ship.
The 157-minute runtime is mostly justified, but the middle section sags slightly before Rocky arrives. The film knows its best asset and takes its time getting there. That patience pays off, but it costs momentum.
The ending, without spoiling it, resolves the science more cleanly than the emotion. The film is better at building a relationship than at closing one.
The Score
“Project Hail Mary” is the rare science fiction film that treats intelligence as a virtue rather than a quirk. It grossed over $685 million worldwide and became the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2026, and that success is not a mystery. It is a film about two engineers who cannot share an atmosphere and decide to save each other anyway.
The comparison to other recent space films is inevitable and mostly unflattering to them. “Project Hail Mary” does not need a villain. It has a deadline. It does not need a romance. It has a friendship between a human and a rock that is more convincing than most love stories.
Lord and Miller have made their most restrained film, and it is also their most affecting. Goddard’s script trusts Weir’s novel enough to keep the science intact. Gosling carries it. Ortiz, through a puppet and a voice, steals it.
The film’s tagline is “Believe in the Hail Mary.” The film earns that. It is a long shot that works.
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