The Lego Movie and Spider-Verse’s Lord & Miller Veer into Live-Action Sci-Fi with Project Hail Mary

At CinemaCon this week, Amazon MGM had a notable array of star-driven upcoming films to tout that are opening successful theaters (before streaming) implicit the people of 2025 and 2026, including Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson successful Mercy and Chris Hemsworth and Halle Berry successful Crime 101. And portion it mightiness instrumentality awhile earlier we spot James Bond again – though executives promised newly-hired producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman are hard astatine enactment processing the adjacent movie – it was wide the workplace has particularly precocious hopes for Project Hail Mary.

Despite opening a afloat twelvemonth from now, successful March 2026, Project Hail Mary was the movie Amazon MGM opened their presumption with, showing an extended preview for the film. Based connected Andy Weir’s publication of the aforesaid name, Project Hail Mary stars Ryan Gosling, with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directing, each of whom were successful attendance (it was Lord’s 2nd quality of the week, since he’d besides been astatine Sony’s CinemaCon presumption to denote Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse’s caller 2027 merchandise date).

Lord and Miller are known for comic and eclectic projects similar 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie and the Spider-Verse films (the second of which they constitute and produce, with others directing), but the footage indicates Project Hail Mary has a antithetic vibe to it from their erstwhile work. The communicative follows Gosling’s mild-mannered schoolhouse teacher turned astronaut, Ryland Grace, whose cognition and accomplishment leads him to beryllium sent into abstraction connected a ngo to prevention humanity, erstwhile it’s discovered that the Earth’s prima is 1 of galore stars that are dying.

There was surely a bully magnitude of wit to beryllium recovered successful the footage, arsenic Ryland panics implicit what he’s being asked to do, declaring astatine 1 point: “You person the close stuff! I person the incorrect stuff!” But overall, it felt much subdued than their broader comedies, oregon adjacent the heartfelt yet often precise comic Spider-Verse movies, appearing to person a much poignant and awestruck wide feeling, arsenic Ryland goes connected his unthinkable ngo to the acold reaches of abstraction - leaving Gosling astatine 1 constituent sporting agelong hairsbreadth and a bushy beard.

The large added constituent present is screenwriter Drew Goddard, whose credits see projects similar Cloverfield and Cabin successful the Woods. But astir notably, erstwhile it comes to this film, Goddard wrote the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for The Martian, which was besides adapted from a publication written by Andy Weir. And there’s decidedly a akin consciousness betwixt that movie and Project Hail Mary, with its science-friendly, warm-hearted and witty look astatine a antheral unsocial successful space…

…well, unsocial astatine first. Because arsenic the footage teased astatine the extremity via a speedy changeable of a unusual manus reaching out, Ryland comes to brushwood an alien helium names Rocky, who Miller noted “is trying to lick the aforesaid problem” successful bid to prevention his people. The footage concludes with Ryland sending a connection backmost to Earth successful which helium declares “So… I met an alien! He’s benignant of increasing connected me. Not growing in me. …Which was a interest for a while.”

Miller described Project Hail Mary arsenic “the biggest situation we’ve taken on,” with Gosling saying “It’s an insanely ambitious communicative that’s monolithic successful scope. It seemed truly hard to marque and that’s benignant of our bag.”

CinemaCon is an lawsuit aimed astatine movie theaters, and arsenic the radical were touting the large surface visuals of the movie – contempt them stressing nary of the effects were final, what we saw looked rather bully adjacent this aboriginal – Miller remarked: “Movies are meant to beryllium seen connected the biggest surface imaginable with the weirdest-looking novelty popcorn bucket possible!”

Also starring Sandra Hüller and Milana Vayntrub, Project Hail Mary opens March 20, 2026.

For much CinemaCon coverage, here’s we learned astir The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Thunderbolts, Predator: Badlands, Superman, Mortal Kombat II, Resident Evil, Spider-Man: Brave New Day, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, John Wick 5, Jurassic World Rebirth, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, Masters of the Universe, The Beatles, The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender, TRON: Ares, and Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.