Drew Goddard Pens Screenplay for Project Hail Mary Film Adaptation

In 2015, people fell in love with The Martian, a surprisingly touching, often funny, and truly excellent adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling debut novel of the same name. Ridley Scott’s film was a critical darling with a big box office and some award season buzz, while Matt Damon’s performance landed him an Oscar nomination. So when rumors started percolating that Weir’s next book was about to get the big-screen treatment—specifically, his most recent bestseller, Project Hail Mary—sci-fi fans and space adventure junkies alike had all the reason to get excited.

Amazon MGM acquired the film rights well before Weir’s novel even made it to shelves. They secured Drew Goddard to write the screenplay in advance of the book’s publication, but fans of the first adaptation will remember his excellent work. The Martian screenplay was a smart and very faithful version of Weir’s original novel, earning Goddard an Academy Award nomination in the process. So it only made sense to bring him back on board for this new adventure. That is true for the new directing team, the accomplished and previously well-matched Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. A project from two directors whose resumes are made up of such disparate titles as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street sounds unlikely to strike gold. But, in the case of hard sci-fi, their aptitude for blending heart and humor might be precisely the right touch.

The new trailer for Project Hail Mary opens with Gosling’s character Ryland Grace waking up in a spacecraft and with absolutely no idea how he got there. The panic and confusion set in quickly, as Ryland realizes he’s light-years away from his apartment, if he’s even in space at all. As he tries to puzzle it out, flashbacks show a different version of the character—clean-shaven, at home on Earth, and teaching his students in a middle-school science class. A visitor interrupts his lesson and offers him an assignment unlike any other: he is the last hope for saving the planet.

There’s a problem, however, one that threatens not just Earth but many other stars in the vicinity: the Sun is dying. A mysterious cosmic phenomenon is killing several other celestial bodies as well, although one single star seems to be unaffected. No one is entirely sure what’s going on, but as a molecular biologist, Grace could be the key to getting to the bottom of things.

Grace, however, is less than keen to join the cause. He’s a mild-mannered teacher, he quips, “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut.” “I can’t even moonwalk!” But Eva Stratt, a high-ranking operative played by Sandra Hüller, isn’t deterred. Her recruitment message is shockingly frank and equally unconvincing. “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct.” Grace is a good teacher, so he’s pretty invested in making sure his students aren’t all killed off. In the end, the chance to save his students is the one thing that finally persuades him to sign up.

Fast-forward through a brisk montage of space training, and we’re off to the races. Or more specifically, off into space. He’s launched on a multi-year voyage across the stars when Grace is finally interrupted again. Awakening with temporary amnesia on the spacecraft, he’s confused and frightened, but he slowly recovers. However, Grace has more than a little bad news: he’s on his own. His crew has already died, somewhere along the way, leaving the captain to complete the journey alone. Details of the casting have since revealed that one of Grace’s doomed crewmates was Milana Vayntrub as Olesya Ilyukhina, a Russian woman.

Fortunately, for both of them, he’s not exactly alone for long. Grace eventually runs into another spacecraft and an entirely new alien species in the process. Rocky, as he nicknames the extraterrestrial, is very much not human. He’s more fungal than animal, an entirely different species than any humanity had even realized existed. Still, he’s not the hostile invader he’s been warned about. “He’s kinda growing on me,” Grace admits in one of his video logs. “At least he’s not growing in me, you know?” He even has time to teach Rocky how to do the thumbs-up. Rocky and Grace together are a thrilling, unexpected discovery for the protagonist, and likely for audiences as well.

Space Odyssey with Comedy and Heart

Project Hail Mary looks set to mix the deeply human stakes of an isolated man in a hostile environment with plenty of dry wit and humor. This will all be in the service of a space epic that could either be as big as the recent adaptation of Weir’s first novel or as small and focused as possible. No matter what, Gosling’s star power, Lord and Miller’s penchant for interweaving comedy with earnestness, and Weir’s talent for bringing together hard science with relatable characters have promise.

Release is set for March 20, 2026. A little more than three years away, so potential viewers have some time to both seek out spoilers and read the book bbeforehand With the novel’s promise of thrilling mystery, edge-of-your-seat action, and alien life in an otherwise lonely cosmos, Project Hail Mary is set to be one of the most anticipated and one of the biggest films of the decade. It’s likely to both eclipse the book and live in its shadow. Only time will tell if the big-screen version of the novel can meet expectations. But at least the first look at the film suggests it will be one mission that’s well worth the wait.