Project Hail Mary Is the Sci-Fi Event Film 2026 Didn't Know It Needed
Ryan Gosling, a five-legged alien, and Phil Lord and Chris Miller walk into a spaceship. What follows may be the most purely enjoyable blockbuster in years — though not everyone agrees.
Gosling Carries the Cosmos
Directors Lord and Miller adapt Andy Weir's beloved novel with a result that is as ceaselessly entertaining as it is achingly hopeful. That's not a small claim for a 156-minute film about a science teacher who wakes up alone in deep space with no memory of how he got there.
Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a man with a molecular biology degree who, after rubbing the wrong scholars the wrong way, ended up teaching middle school science — until a mysterious government operative named Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Hüller, recruits him for the most consequential mission in human history.
He's the rare performer who can gracefully bounce between comedy and drama, his comedic timing impeccable and his dramatic gravitas never in question. The challenge here is immense: Gosling is essentially alone on screen for the film's second half, sharing it only with a fully puppeted and effects-driven alien he names Rocky. He makes it look effortless.
Rocky Steals the Movie
Nobody expected an extraterrestrial made of rock — with no face, a flat slate where its features should be, and five legs — to become the emotional core of a summer tentpole. And yet.
The highlight is the core relationship between Grace and Rocky as the two must learn to communicate and work together to save their respective planets. Their scenes together not only provide plenty of laughs and nerdy bliss, but their friendship becomes the beating heart of the film — sneaking up on the viewer in a way the novel's fans will recognize immediately.
Early press screenings drew comparisons to E.T., Interstellar, and The Martian — sometimes in the same sentence. Some called it perfect. Others flagged it as their earliest Best Actor contender of the year. Cinematographer Greig Fraser, whose credits run from Zero Dark Thirty to Dune: Part Two, delivers images expansive enough to justify the IMAX run.
Where Critics Split
Consensus skews strongly positive, but not unanimously. Variety's Owen Gleiberman broke from the crowd with a pointed dissent. His read: the film is way too long at two hours and 36 minutes, that Grace's neurotic edge — compelling in the Earth-set flashbacks — dissolves once he's on the ship, and the finale doesn't know where to end.
The sentimental dilemma of whether Grace will continue the mission or turn back to save Rocky registers, in Gleiberman's assessment, as emotional manipulation rather than genuine drama. That's a fair push. Whether it lands depends entirely on how much you've bought into the Grace-Rocky dynamic by the third act.
Lord and Miller's Biggest Swing
Project Hail Mary is science fiction in a classical sense — a story of problem-solving where conflict emerges from external threats, not malice. It digs into the raw science without losing the heartstrings. That balance is the Lord-Miller signature, honed across The Lego Movie and the Spider-Verse films, now applied to their most ambitious live-action work.
The film opens in the United States via Amazon MGM Studios on March 20, 2026, in IMAX with a 1.43:1 aspect ratio in select theaters.
Entertainment journalist Scott Menzel called it "an epic cinematic achievement," predicting it will be "a major awards player across the board." Gosling himself, at Comic-Con 2025, described the appeal of Ryland plainly: "He's somebody who gave up on himself on Earth, and he's given an opportunity to believe in himself again."
