The first trailer for Project Hail Mary has appeared, with Ryan Gosling playing the lead in an adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel of the same name. It’s a story about a man trying to save the sun, but as the trailer also sets up, it’s a far more intimate tale about one man’s relationship with something completely other.
Andy Weir’s first book, The Martian, was an extraordinary break-out hit, and well deserved to be. The tale of a smart, innovative man stranded on Mars went on to have a great movie based on it, directed by legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott. It was a glorious success story...and then Weir published Artemis. Oh good lord, what a fall. An astoundingly terrible book, it is one of the most excruciating examples of the “strong female character” trope, and while rights to make a movie were purchased before it was published, it’s not really a surprise that nothing’s happened with that since 2018.
Fears that the author, who self-published The Martian after being rejected by various imprints, might be a one-hit-wonder grew, until 2021's Project Hail Mary appeared, and was a completely compelling piece of sci-fi on par with his first book. Phew! And now, we have a first trailer for the inevitable movie adaptation, starring Ryan Gosling as the book’s main character, Ryland Grace. Even better, the screenplay is by Drew Goddard, who not only wrote The Cabin in the Woods, Cloverfield, and many episodes of Buffy, Angel and Lost, but also adapted The Martian. Oh, and it’s being directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the pair behind The Lego Movie and the writers of the Into The Spider-Verse movies.
So Ryland Grace is a junior high science teacher with a specialist background in molecular biology who is rather forcibly drafted to help with an effort by the European Space Agency to investigate a universal phenomenon of “dimming,” whereby stars are losing luminescence, including, rather pressingly, our own. Grace is pressured into joining a years-long mission to a star, Tau Ceti, that is resistant to the dimming, to find out why. Except, as you’d expect, lots goes wrong. But this isn’t a movie about that!
If you’ve not read the book, the latter third of the trailer might feel like quite a spoiler, and—I dunno—if I were marketing this, I’d have been a bit more subtle. But in truth, it’s actually setting up the vast bulk of the story, and really gives nothing away about the true extent of the narrative.
This is, without giving any specifics, a story about a unique relationship, and if the film can match the intimacy and uniquely peculiar nature of the novel, it could be very special. Or, the movie could trivialize that aspect and be far more about shit exploding in space. Who knows. But still, it looks pretty and fun so far.
The movie, which also stars Sandra Hüller, Liz Kingsman, and Lionel Boyce, is headed to theaters in March of next year. I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot more of it before then.
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