Project Hail Mary

Don't know if the book should be made into a film because anytime that happens the film always gets the book wrong, many of my favourite books that have been made into films have suffered as a result.
 
TsrJoe said:
Not q sure the actor is the right choice (based upon previous roles) but happy to reserve judgement, the book was ok
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I read an interview with Andy Weir recently, where he mentioned that he gives names to his main characters that are related in some way to the actor he was picturing when he wrote the character. Mark Watney's inspiration in The Martian was Mark Wahlburg. Obviously, he wasn't in the movie (I think Damon did a fine job...). For Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace's real-life equivalent was .... Ryan Gosling. We'll see how it plays out, but I liked Gosling in Bladerunner 2049
 
Currently listening to it on Audible read by Ray Porter and enjoying it a lot, and I think the narration is excellent too. It’s one of those things where I’m going it didn’t I listen to this sooner.
 
How Project Hail Mary's Spaceship Set Was Built!

Mar 13, 2026 #adamsavage #projecthailmary #behindthescenes
The incredible sets of Project Hail Mary were made possible through the combined efforts of designers, engineers, and set builders–talented craftspeople working at the highest level. Adam Savage had the pleasure of meeting one of the specialty prop makers on the film behind the complex electronics of the Hail Mary’s flight cabin.
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View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OUSwAUaMaiQ
 
Am super-stoked to see this. I loved the book, and the trailers look amaze! amaze! amaze!
BTW: Weir's following book - Artemis - is also good. I expect a movie within 4 years .... lol
 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYHCTEnYOr4

00:00 Introduction
01:28 What could make the Sun dim?
04:18 The science behind "astrophage"
06:57 Relativity and time dilation
14:19 The real stars tau-ceti and 40 Eridani and their planets
16:24 The science of alien life (but not as we know it)
20:27 Bloopers

Linked papers:

Ashby (2003) - https://link.springer.com/article/10....
Burrows et al. (2024) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.17494
Figueira et al. (2025) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.07514
Ginsburg (2018) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.04307
Hafele & Keating (1972) - https://www.jstor.org/stable/1734834?...
Horneck et al. (1994) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Jönsson et al. (2008) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Leibundgut et al. (1996) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9605134
Ma et al. (2018) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.07098
Schwieterman et al. (2018) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.05791
Smith et al. (2021) - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1...
Tuomi et al. (2013) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.4277
Wallis et al. (2004) - https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/f...
Wesson et al. (2010) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1011.0101
 
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Just got back from my IMAX viewing.

Having read the book recently in anticipation of this, I was surprised by how very faithful this movie was to the book. Visually stunning and beautiful in how it depicted Grace and Rocky's friendship and what they had to do to succeed in saving their worlds.

A optimistic and uplifting story in an age of cynicism. This will be a movie for the ages.
 
Just saw it with my GF.
Random thoughts
-books and movies cannot be the same, because words versus images, no problem with that;
-a bit less than 3 hours was the perfect length to keep the book essential structure making a "reasonable" movie;
-the cuts they made were pretty smart, just what was needed to respect the book;
-whatever they cut, they traded it for a) visuals (astonishingly beautiful) and emotions (buddy-buddy Ryland / Rocky);
-one scene I will not spoil has just climbed to my personal pantheon, with a) Interstellar docking b) Gravity reentry c) The martian "Starman" scenes. Also subtil hommages to 2001, a space odyssey.

Bottom line: a good adaptation of a good novel. Liked both.
 
I saw this at the weekend having read it when it first came out. As mentioned above, it stays very close to the book, but I feel there just needed to be one or two lines extra to help explain things which viewers may not understand if they hadn't read the book. Overall though, my wife and I enjoyed it very much. Plenty of laughs, tension, sadness (she had a good blub a few times) and the story moves along well. Recommended.
 
scautomoton said:
I saw this at the weekend having read it when it first came out. As mentioned above, it stays very close to the book, but I feel there just needed to be one or two lines extra to help explain things which viewers may not understand if they hadn't read the book. Overall though, my wife and I enjoyed it very much. Plenty of laughs, tension, sadness (she had a good blub a few times) and the story moves along well. Recommended.
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I haven't yet either read the book or watched the movie (though I plan to do so very soon for the latter), but there wouldn't even have been a need for extra explanatory dialogue, which can get clumsy at times - exposes could have been provided by simple subtitles, like they were in 2001.
 
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Saw this last night with the fam: youngest 11, oldest 48. It totally deserves the hype. Likeable, well structured, exciting. Unapologetically insists you pay attention.

Some key things for me:
  1. It is KIND. Perhaps an odd thing to point out, but it really resonated with me. These days so much storytelling relies on cruelty for stakes or for humour. It is really striking when a story doesn't do that.
  2. Really effective use of silence - especially as part of a communal cinema experience
  3. Just beautiful.
  4. Such a smart restructuring / retelling of the story. It felt like it hit almost all of the key story points and meta themes from the book.
My main dislike: The big miss for me was Stratt. In the books I think they represent "As a society we need to get this done now, and done right. Individuals don't matter" (and also I guess NASA's attitude to doing space right). The point for me was they were almost superhuman/inhuman. Their softening in the movie muddies that. Though boy can they sing!
 
targetpractice said:
Saw this last night with the fam: youngest 11, oldest 48. It totally deserves the hype. Likeable, well structured, exciting. Unapologetically insists you pay attention.

Some key things for me:
  1. It is KIND. Perhaps an odd thing to point out, but it really resonated with me. These days so much storytelling relies on cruelty for stakes or for humour. It is really striking when a story doesn't do that.
  2. Really effective use of silence - especially as part of a communal cinema experience
  3. Just beautiful.
  4. Such a smart restructuring / retelling of the story. It felt like it hit almost all of the key story points and meta themes from the book.
My main dislike: The big miss for me was Stratt. In the books I think they represent "As a society we need to get this done now, and done right. Individuals don't matter" (and also I guess NASA's attitude to doing space right). The point for me was they were almost superhuman/inhuman. Their softening in the movie muddies that. Though boy can they sing!
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Well, now I'm even looking more forward to seeing the movie - after *regrettably* actually paying good dollars to watch the utterly revolting, sickening representation of future spaceflight by everyone's (except me!!!) precocious wannabe wunderkind Christopher Nolan in Interstellar with his bathroom tiled Bed Bath & Beyond spacecraft interiors, my inner brain-view doctor is ready for a healthy dose of more believable scify.
 
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Seen it. Amaze amaze amaze!

I actually found a lot of the book a drag as a reading experience because of all the 'competence porn' - writeups of basic scientific experiments. As a film, it succeeds in indicating the process without spending hours on the detail that would not suit an adaptation but nonetheless indicates that the work took time and effort.

To clarify, I mean they didn't wave away all the science but rather showed something on screen that would stand up if you went to look at the book.

'Someone I used to know' who worked in film pointed out to me that a page of screenplay equals about a minute of screen time. A two-hour film is a 120 pages, while a novel can be 300+. Something has to give and this did it well.

Aesthetically, it's beautiful. Ideologically, showing scientists and scientific method in a positive light is great. We need films like this.
 
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targetpractice said:
It is KIND. Perhaps an odd thing to point out, but it really resonated with me. These days so much storytelling relies on cruelty for stakes or for humour. It is really striking when a story doesn't do that.
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Absolutely agree! This is a time in which cruelty is celebrated and it's so good to see kindness as essential in a story.

targetpractice said:
...Stratt.... Though boy can they sing!
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Sandra Hüller is terrific. I found Stratt as a character very good and I'd have liked to have seen more of her. The song was Müller's idea, actually - she insisted on doing it and wouldn't do any other, so they incorporated it into the story and it really makes her character, showing her layers.

Did you notice Meryl Streep?
 
Yep the script writers peeled the book like an onion - stripping off a lot of stuff that wouldn't fit in a movie, even an almost three hours one. In a sense they traded that too-detailed stuff against movie inner strengths: visuals, emotions. It was a difficult tradeoff but they did it smartly and mostly succeded.
 
Spoilers:

I think the movie version of Blip-A *might* have been based on Frederik de Wilde's StarshipSPIDER:


--that combined with Cygnus from THE BLACK HOLE...but only a tad.

I would think the aliens would know about relativity...

Blip-A looks like a mass of antennae.... maybe this version opens up into a giant Starwisp...or something.

"Sunshine" had the threat being a Q-ball:

Q-ball - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

I like that a lot more than star-eating protists...and you might just use Q-balls...one day.

The movie ships:

Unlike Grace, I would have jumped at the chance of a one-way mission.

I prefer kids not be seen or heard.

The exo-Venus I would have called Perelandra, and my new shipmate?


A great movie... maybe not as heady as SOLARIS or ARRIVAL, but more fun.

Model
www.therpf.com

Project Hail Mary build vid.

Hi RPF folk. I thought you guys may fancy a look at one of my latest creations. I saw the first two Hail Mary trailers and decided to make myself something for christmas. Well i just got it finished, with all the details a bit out ill give you that, but the next version should look much nicer...
www.therpf.com www.therpf.com

More:
screenrant.com

Project Hail Mary Box Office Extends Amazon's Record-Breaking Run With Minuscule Week 2 Drop

It's performing superbly for a non-franchise film.
screenrant.com screenrant.com
reactormag.com

Project Hail Mary Knows What Makes Humans Special — And It’s Not Heroism - Reactor

Bravery and self-sacrifice are often tied to stories of heroism — but what if there's a better alternative?
reactormag.com reactormag.com
reactormag.com

How Project Hail Mary Makes the Impossible Possible - Reactor

This movie walks a thin tightrope over a bottomless void, and I love it
reactormag.com reactormag.com
www.space.com

10 major differences between the 'Project Hail Mary' book and movie

Ryland Grace's world-saving adventure saw a few changes during the jump from the page to the screen; here are ten big differences we spotted.
www.space.com www.space.com
www.space.com

'Project Hail Mary' author Andy Weir reveals his favorite scenes in the movie, praises Ryan Gosling's amazing performance, & more (interview)

'Seeing Ryan add all these layers, I'm like, 'Oh good, he’s covering the things that I didn’t do.''
www.space.com www.space.com
www.therpf.com

Project Hail Mary Film

I LOVED the Andy Weird novel and was slightly trepidatious about the film when they announced Ryan Gosling in the role. At the same time I am keenly aware that you need a big name to get these films made. Having said that I do feel like the trailer captures the tone of the book fairly well, from...
www.therpf.com www.therpf.com
amyoscar.substack.com

1 of 3: Rocky and Grace

I saw a movie this weekend that I can’t stop thinking about.
amyoscar.substack.com amyoscar.substack.com

Real science
www.space.com

Where should we send a real 'Hail Mary' spacecraft? A new study has the answers

A new atlas of 45 potentially habitable planets makes us think of the new film "Project Hail Mary," based on the book by Andy Weir.
www.space.com www.space.com
www.universetoday.com

Looking For Nearby ‘Project Hail Mary’ Worlds

It’s out. The top sci-fi draw of the year Project Hail Mary is now showing in a theater near you. The movie tells the tale of middle school teacher Ryland Grace, who is sent on a one way, last ditch mission to save humanity. The story is a refreshing take on first contact and just how different...
www.universetoday.com www.universetoday.com
www.space.com

100 new alien worlds: Scientists find hidden haul in data from NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft

"Using our newly developed RAVEN pipeline, we were able to validate 118 new planets, and over 2,000 high-quality planet candidates, nearly 1,000 of them entirely new."
www.space.com www.space.com

A strange space map of yore
 
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Had the chance to view it in a nearly full theater. Was really pleased of the lively audience freely reacting to the many jokes (too many?),

Many points that I would have raised has been already perfectly addressed by my pairs here so not much to add except to confirm the overall impression that we may celebrate a rebirth (crossing fingers) of popular cinema* that just proved you can even do this in a difficult genre (Sci-Fi**). '

I was not surprised to learn about the team relations with the Spider Verse saga, which I would recommend to all.

As a side note, seeing Tornado and Sea Harrier in USN colors was fun.

*In opposition of reaching to a particular audience to augment numbers
**Remembering that the last Alien movie was also quite popular
 
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I like ensemble pieces…you had some of that here, despite the “man alone” scenario.

The most realistic scenario starts like CONTACT (no ships at first, just signals) mixed with the behind the scene goings on with the movie Arrival, with many teams devising protocols.

The one way “suicide mission” would have been in the past, with this:
en.wikipedia.org

File:Titan-3C MOL-Gemini-B-Test 3.jpg - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
That actually looks more like HM anyway, but it has a SNAP reactor and zip propellants both.

The astronaut would have wrangled with the object behind the TETON EVENT 1972 daylight fireball, with shuttle orbiter payload bay size based on how long the body was…not (just) HEXAGON.

The researchers would have been unaware of the DoD intercepting the probe—and the film then is more like THE CHINA SYNDROME mixed with THE KREMLIN LETTER than Capricorn One.

No doomsday scenario , no fanciful amoebae with the energy density of zero-point (Nomad of TOS did that anyway.)

Shuttle returns the Bracewell probe with a mummy of a life-form, explaining some servicemen seeing an alien. The enemy here is secrecy, with people the world over able to hear the broadcast, so the secret would have to come out.

No possession, no saucers, apart from the Bracewell probe’s aero shell the Gemini pilots cut away.

Rotation

 
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Having just watched the film, I would have relaxed into it more if there was some indication why they only launched one ship - ignoring the need for dramatic effect.

Yes, PHM cost $11 trillion or whatever, but once the R&D costs are sunk then building hardware is the cheap bit. Maybe fuel was the issue?

If it's your one big chance to save everything, staking it all on one ship that could get whacked by an asteroid before it even gets out of the system seems foolish.

A single throwaway line about "We've built three but to be honest just one getting there will be a miracle" would have helped, and would have made Grace look like even more of a fluke.

Nice Easter egg right at the end of the credits, though; made me laugh!
 
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