Ryan Gosling's Project Hail Mary opens March 20 to strong early buzz

Project Hail Mary opens in theaters on March 20, and the advance reception has been unusually strong even by the standards of a highly anticipated studio release. Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, an astronaut who wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is or how he got there, and slowly pieces together that he is the last hope for stopping an extinction-level event threatening Earth. The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who previously made The Lego Movie and the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse films.

The source material is Andy Weir's 2021 novel of the same name, which sold over 1.5 million copies in its first year and spent months on the New York Times bestseller list. Weir's previous novel, The Martian, was adapted into a 2015 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon that grossed $630 million worldwide. Project Hail Mary has a larger narrative scope than The Martian and a structural twist in its second act that fans of the book have been curious to see handled on screen.

What the story is actually about

The premise is specific and scientific in the way Weir's fiction tends to be. The Sun is slowly losing energy due to a single-celled organism called Astrophage that feeds on solar radiation and has begun spreading to other stars. Earth sends a three-person crew to the Tau Ceti solar system, approximately 12 light-years away, to investigate why that star appears unaffected. Grace wakes up to find he is the only surviving crew member and has no memory of volunteering for a one-way mission.

The film spends its first half intercutting between Grace piecing together his memory and flashback sequences showing how Earth's scientists discovered the Astrophage threat and built the Hail Mary spacecraft. The second half, which takes place almost entirely in deep space, is where the film's most unusual creative challenge lies. Readers of the novel know what happens. The question is whether Lord and Miller found a way to make it work visually for audiences who have not read the book.

What early reviews are saying

Advance screenings for press took place in the first week of March, and the critical response has been strongly positive. As of the March 19 embargo lift, the film holds a 94 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 87 reviews. Several critics have specifically praised Gosling's performance as a solo anchoring act for the first half of the film, comparing it favourably to Tom Hanks in Cast Away in terms of holding audience attention without a conventional co-star to play against.

The visual effects have also drawn consistent praise. The Astrophage organism is depicted as a luminescent single-celled life form visible under the ship's electron microscope, and the spacecraft interiors were designed with input from NASA engineers to maintain functional plausibility. Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as the most scientifically committed large-budget science fiction film since Interstellar.

Why Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were a surprising choice

Lord and Miller are best known for comedies and animated films. Their live-action work includes the 21 Jump Street films and the Spider-Verse franchise as producers. Project Hail Mary is their first live-action directorial effort since the original 21 Jump Street in 2012. Weir's novel is emotionally warmer than The Martian but also more technically demanding in terms of the science it asks readers and now viewers to follow, which made the director choice feel like a mismatch on paper when it was announced.

Early reviews suggest the combination works because the novel's tone is itself more playful than most hard science fiction. Grace's internal monologue is frequently funny, and the film leans into that without undercutting the genuine stakes. Lord and Miller's background in comedy gives the film a lightness in its first act that makes the eventual weight of Grace's situation land harder by contrast.

Box office expectations and comparison films

MGM and Amazon MGM Studios are releasing the film on approximately 4,100 screens in North America. Pre-sale ticket numbers tracked by Fandango and Atom Tickets have been running ahead of comparable sci-fi films at the same point before release. Deadline Hollywood's opening weekend projection as of March 17 is $55 million to $65 million domestic, which would make it one of the stronger spring openings in recent years for a non-franchise science fiction film.

For context, Dune: Part One opened to $40.1 million in October 2021 on a hybrid theatrical and HBO Max release. Arrival, Denis Villeneuve's 2016 first-contact film, opened to $24 million before building over multiple weekends to $100 million domestic total. Project Hail Mary is tracking significantly above both of those at comparable pre-release windows, which suggests a wide audience rather than just dedicated science fiction fans is engaged with the marketing.

The film's runtime is 2 hours and 28 minutes. An international release follows on March 27 in most major markets, with China pending separate regulatory approval.