Ryan Gosling Wakes Up Light-Years from Home in Project Hail Mary

In 2015, The Martian took audiences by storm. Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s first novel—which Weir published himself in 2011, long before it hit the bestseller lists—was tense, funny, and unexpectedly moving. Matt Damon played the central role of Mark Watney, a likeable and highly resourceful botanist who is presumed dead by his crew and left behind by NASA on Mars. The Martian received rave reviews, great box office numbers, and even some Oscars, and for many, it was Weir’s debut work that made the biggest impression.

For these viewers, the adaptation of Weir’s most recent project was one to watch. Project Hail Mary is a space odyssey and science education program all wrapped into one. It’s a follow-up novel to Weir’s 2021 bestseller of the same name and centers on astrophysicist Ryland Grace, a somewhat nerdy science teacher on a journey to save Earth. With the first official trailer out, there’s a sense that this film could be the perfect next installment in Weir’s spacey canon.

In the Trailer, a Solo Mission Turns Into an Unexpected Friendship

The first preview for Project Hail Mary gives a good sense of tone, and the trailer is everything a Weir film should be: science-heavy, survivalist, and witty. From the spectacular, big-budget space shots at the beginning to the mysterious, action-packed climax, it’s easy to see that this is a wide-appealing space epic filled with wild concepts, comedy, and heart.

Ryan Gosling is the film’s new protagonist, the affable Ryland Grace, and has been attached to the role since Amazon MGM Studios first acquired the film rights to Weir’s novel back in April of 2021, well before the book’s eventual publication. Drew Goddard is on scriptwriting duty and returns to the sci-fi adaptation work he started with Weir’s Martian. Goddard earned an Oscar nomination for the witty and faithful adaptation of The Martian, so it was only fitting that he was on scriptwriting duty for the next Weir adaptation. The direction is left to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, an unlikely duo who have produced one of the smartest cinematic universes around: SkyMed, a hard sci-fi masterpiece, was not what one expected from the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie writers and directors. Project Hail Mary might just be the place for Lord and Miller to break into harder science fiction.

Grace wakes up in the first shot, already on his way out of Earth’s orbit. He’s a middle school science teacher who lives in a New York apartment, but he’s a long way from home in a galaxy he barely recognizes. “I woke up on a spaceship,” Grace announces early in the trailer. “Right in the middle of space.” His attempts to find out what’s going on quickly reveal that he is several light years away from his small apartment—light years, not light minutes, not light seconds, but years. Grace’s flashbacks and mounting panic make it clear: this is no ordinary spaceship, and Grace doesn’t know how he got there.

Grace has no memory of his life before this spaceship, but there were clues. In earlier flashbacks, he’s seen wearing a full beard and short hair, talking to his students in a classroom environment before a whiteboard. His colleagues rush into his classroom to hand him a file and offer him a mission of a lifetime. Something is killing off the Sun, and he’s their last chance to solve the mystery.

The trailer explains some of what’s at stake: not just Earth is dying—other nearby stars are flickering, growing dark, their planets desolate, and one star in particular has emerged as an anomalous exception. “Some cosmic ray is wiggling around,” one scientist states, “and it doesn’t even know it’s breaking the fundamental laws of the universe!” Grace’s background in molecular biology may have made him their best shot.

Grace is lucky, however. He soon comes into contact with another spacecraft and, with it, another lifeform. Rocky, as Grace calls him, is the “second lifeform discovered in this galaxy by humanity,” and he’s about as far from a typical alien lifeform as you can get. Rocky is unaggressive and open to making friends, perhaps the only lifeform willing to offer Grace companionship in a mission so desolate. “He’s kinda growing on me,” Grace says in one of his recorded videos. “At least he’s not growing in me, you know?” Rocky is also evidently open to learning the customs of Earthling life, as Grace offers to school him the universal sign of thumbs up.

The film should be full of character, warmth, and laughs.

Project Hail Mary has everything it needs to be a must-watch film. With its recent release date of March 20, 2026, eager fans have a long time to avoid or read the novel in preparation for the film. The blend of humor, genuine scientific learning, mystery, danger, and unusual companionship makes Project Hail Mary one of the most highly anticipated science fiction films in the next five years, and the first trailer doesn’t disappoint.