First Footage of Project Hail Mary Reveals Ryan Gosling’s Space Mission

In 2015, moviegoers got a crash course in the work of writer Andy Weir. The Martian, a deadpan, witty, and unexpectedly touching adaptation of Weir’s debut novel, earned a heap of critical acclaim, a strong box office performance, and even a few trophies. So when news came that Weir was at it again, this time penning a new novel based on the scientific concept of a “Hail Mary” shot, fans of character-driven hard sci-fi had all the reason to get hyped.

Now, with the first official trailer for Amazon MGM’s big-screen adaptation of Weir’s 2021 bestselling novel Project Hail Mary, viewers finally get a good look at the brainy, larger-than-life story. Thanks to the publisher’s novel movie rights purchase, before even Weir’s book had reached the shelves, Amazon MGM Studios has signed on both the screenplay (adapted by Drew Goddard) and directors (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller). Add to the mix a star-making lead performance from Ryan Gosling, and it’s no surprise that Project Hail Mary is looking to be a high-stakes science fiction event of its own.

The opening shots, which jump immediately into the cockpit of a fictional spaceship, promise a similar mix of genre-specific science and profane humor as Ridley Scott’s acclaimed film. With plenty of big ideas and major effects, the Project Hail Mary trailer promises to be an event of its own. But does the first look live up to our expectations of both Andy Weir’s source material and Gosling’s astronaut protagonist?

The Reluctant Scientist: Ryland Grace

Ryan Gosling stars as the film’s lead, a soft-spoken middle school science teacher named Ryland Grace. Blearily blinking awake, Gosling is at first confused about his location. Soon, however, Grace pieces together that he is aboard some kind of vessel in the depths of space. “Okay,” he announces into a microphone, “six light-years away from Earth. Nice.” A few punches of the button reveal that he’s hundreds of light-years from home, and the comparative address of his Brooklyn apartment quickly follows.

Cutting back to his school, a stark contrast of clean-shaven Gosling in a classroom full of bright-eyed children, Grace is interrupted by a woman approaching his blackboard. As they discuss the upcoming weekend, Grace is suddenly approached by a middle-aged, gray-haired woman. “Dr. Ryland Grace?” the woman inquires. “Do you want to go to space?” Grace blinks and shakes his head. “I’m not an astronaut!” he says, causing the woman to chuckle and turn away. This woman, Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Hüller, will be back. “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct,” Stratt will explain later.

Grace isn’t having it. “Listen, I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” he yells, a statement that at least partially contradicts an early comment about his ineptitude with the moonwalk. But with the extinction of his students, and the rest of the planet’s population, it’s a risk Grace will take. After being sufficiently trained, he is launched, and not much later, woken. By this point, he has suffered temporary amnesia and doesn’t remember how he got there. Nor, the credits make clear with a casting mention of Milana Vayntrub in the role of Olesya Ilyukhina, is he not alone? Ilyukhina, a Russian crew member, also succumbed to death on their journey.

With Grace the only living crewmember on the spaceship, he soon finds another, of an alien variety. Crashing his ship into the other vessel, Grace makes first contact with an unfamiliar, exotic species. Smelling the space air as his ship vibrates outside of its port, he makes first contact with his tentacled new friend, a furry, puppy-like lifeform. “Hi, I’m Ryland,” the astronaut says into a camera. “He’s kinda growing on me,” he later records, a slight pause between each word. “At least he’s not growing in me, you know?” The camera cuts, and the camera on his wrist doubles as a translator as he records a new message. “Watch this,” he continues, signing “thumbs up” to his new friend. “It’s a thumbs up.”

A Space Epic with Humor and Heart

Echoing the tone and style of Ridley Scott’s hard sci-fi blockbuster The Martian, Project Hail Mary balances the dramatics of deep-space survival with a very human touch of humor and heart. With a large budget and smart, creative vision from both Gosling and his directing team, Weir’s literary excursion into the genre promises to be a big-screen treat.

The film is slated for a release on March 20, 2026, giving audiences time to not only read the book or play spoilsports by avoiding all information about it beforehand, but also to see Weir’s story come to life. Whether or not it will match or even best the source material remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Project Hail Mary will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, sci-fi events of the 2020s.