The Martian Team Reunites for New Sci-Fi Film Project Hail Mary

Back in 2015, we fell in love with The Martian, Ridley Scott’s gripping, funny, and surprisingly heart-warming adaptation of Andy Weir’s hard science fiction novel of the same name. The Martian was a critical and commercial hit, with Matt Damon nailing the lead role as Mark Watney and even snagging a few awards along the way. Weir was back on our radars this year, and not for the first time this year, with a sequel to his first big book, Project Hail Mary. With its intriguing story and premise, the book became one of the bestselling novels of 2021. With a new trailer in, sci-fi fans have had their first real look at how it all might work on screen, and as fans of The Martian, we’ve got a good feeling about this one.

Amazon MGM Studios has dropped the first trailer for Project Hail Mary, which is the upcoming space adventure feature film adaptation of the 2021 novel of the same name by Andy Weir. Starring Ryan Gosling, the film also boasts a screenplay by Drew Goddard and a directorial team made up of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, with their history of mixing comedy and heart in unlikely places a strong indication of what audiences can expect from the upcoming film.

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Based in part on Drew Goddard’s screenplay and executive produced by Weir, Amazon and MGM picked up the film adaptation of the upcoming novel before Weir even published his book. Goddard, best known for films such as Cabin in the Woods and the Academy Award-nominated screen adaptation of The Martian, is bringing that experience in smart and faithful adaptations to the writing room for Project Hail Mary. Lord and Miller might seem like a strange fit for a hard science fiction book, with their best-known directorial efforts such as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie coming in lighter, comedic places. But it could be that mixture of humor and humanity that really elevates this story.

Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher and generally mild-mannered everyman whose life changes when he wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he ended up there or what he’s doing. The trailer for the film wastes no time in establishing Grace’s plight. In a sparsely furnished room, Grace wakes up from a cryogenic sleep and immediately panics. His memories are foggy, but nothing is matching up, and by looking out the window, it quickly becomes clear to him that he’s not on Earth at all. Flashbacks begin to fill in Grace’s memory, though, and we see a clean-shaven Gosling back on Earth as a middle school teacher. He’s explaining the strange happenings in the skies over Earth to his class when a mysterious government agent approaches him with a mission: save the Earth from certain destruction.

The Problem: The Sun is Dying

It turns out the Sun is about to die. Several stars in the solar system are dimming rapidly, but one lone star is also dimming, something that scientists can’t explain. We don’t know what’s going on, but scientists are confident it’s some form of cosmic phenomenon and that it’s coming for Earth next. As a former molecular biologist, Grace is just the person to solve the mystery.

Grace isn’t excited by the prospect of saving the world, though. He’s not the first person you would call an astronaut. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” he jokes in one scene. “I can’t even moonwalk!” But for all his bravado, Grace is feeling the pressure. Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) is an administrator at his school, and she doesn’t care what his reservations. “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us,” she says. “If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct.” Grace acquiesces. For all his bragging, Grace doesn’t want to lose his class and the rest of the world.

Grace is rocketed into space after rapid training and a grueling launch, but he wakes up on his spaceship alone. He has a few days of temporary amnesia from the time he was kidnapped by space forces, but Grace remembers that all of his crewmates died somewhere along the way. Extras include in the casting details for the film confirm this, with a dead Russian crewmate named Olesya Ilyukhina, played by Milana Vayntrub. Grace is very much alone.