‘Project Hail Mary’ By Phil Lord & Christopher Miller.
Lord and Miller are finally back in the directors chairs. They have set their next movie “Project Hail Mary”, a space adventure based on the novel of the same name by Andy Weir at Amazon MGM Studios. Ryan Gosling is set to star. Drew Goddard will pen the script. Amy Pascal, Aditya Sood, Gosling , Lord, Miller and Andy Wwir are producing the pic.
In May, Oscar-nominated “Anatomy of a Fall” actress Sandra Huller joined the pic. Huller had a big 2024, coming off her critically acclaimed role in “Anatomy of a Fall” as well as “The Zone of Interest’. both of which premiered at Cannes. She also recently joined the Alejandro G. Inarritu and Tom Cruise movie. In June, Milana Vayntrub joined the cast as well.
The film is based on Weir’s novel and set in the near future. Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a school teacher-turned-astronaut who wakes up from a coma, alone, on a space station with no memory of who he is or the mission. His memory returns in bursts and he pieces together that he was sent to the Tau Ceti solar system, 12 light-years from Earth, to reverse the impact of a space event that had already hurled our planet into the early stages of an Ice Age. as details of the mission unravel, he must call on all of his scientific training and sheer ingenuity, until he meets a mysterious alien who has traveled light years to save his own species from the same fate.
It was announced in March 2020, that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures was nearing a deal to acquire the project, an adaptation of Project Hail Mary, a then-upcoming Andy Weir novel, with Ryan Gosling set to star in and produce the film. The rights to the novel was acquired by MGM for $3 million. In May, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were hired to direct and produce the film. Drew Goddard who had previously written the screenplay for Weir’s debut novel “The Martian” into a film starring Matt Damon, was hired to write the screenplay in July and the title was tentatively called “Hail Mary”. In April 2024, Amazon MGM Studios, who acquired MGM in 2022, announced a possible 2026 release window for the film.
Principal photography began on June 3, 2024 in the United Kingdom.
“Project Hail Mary” is set to be Lord and Miller’s first directorial effort since exiting “Solo: A Star Wars Story”. This means that the last film they directed was 2014’s “22 Jump Street”. They also co-wrote a couple of animated films including “Spider-Man: Across The SpiderVerse” and “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part”.
Lord and Miller began directing ‘Solo’ only to be fired by Lucasfilm, after over four-and-a-half months of filming was complete. Lucasfilm stated that the firing was due to “creative differences”, while EW reported that Lord and Miller were going off-script and trying to make the film into more of a comedy. Two days later, Ron Howard was announced as their replacement.
The result is that they haven’t directed a film in over 10 years. They’ve instead turned into producing movies such as “The Lego Movie 2”, “The Mitchells vs The Machines”, “Strays” and the animated Sony Spider-Verse movies.
Oscar-winner and brilliant DP Greig Fraser is the cinematographer. his past credits include “Dune Part 1&2”, “The Batman”, “Rogue One” and “The Creator”. The film will be shot in IMAX.
The film is scheduled to be released on March 20, 2026 in the U.S by Amazon MGM Studios.
