Is Project Hail Mary based on a book? Details explored

Ryan Gosling is set to star in Project Hail Mary, a new space movie written by The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard. The new film will be directed by Academy Award-winners Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who previously teamed up to direct 21 and 22 Jump Street. In the sci-fi movie, Gosling will play a middle school science teacher turned astronaut to save the dying Earth.

Project Hail Mary is based on Andy Weir's novel of the same name, which follows the space adventure of Ryland Grace (Gosling). He's the same author behind The Martian. Weir first published the book in May 2021, which won the Goodreads Choice Award for Readers' Favorite Science Fiction that same year. The book's synopsis from Goodreads says:

"Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it."

Find out more about the movie adaptation of Andy Weir's novel below.

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Everything to know about Project Hail Mary, the movie

Ryan Gosling stars alongside Oscar-nominated actress and star of Anatomy of a Fall, Sandra Hüller, in Project Hail Mary. Gosling is the reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace in the story, while Hüller plays Eva Stratt, the woman the United Nations has put in charge to head the "Project Hail Mary."

Stratt has a singular role in the sci-fi movie, which is to save Earth from Astrophage and give everyone on the planet a chance to survive the strange phenomenon. Meanwhile, Ryland becomes the sole solution to save the planet from an astronomical catastrophe after everyone in the team dies during their space travel, leaving Ryland the only survivor.

Based on Andy Weir's novel, Ryland isn't the only one who traveled light years to the mysterious star system to prevent the extinction of their own species. It will be up to them to puzzle out the biggest scientific mystery in the universe.

Besides Gosling and Hüller, here are the cast members in the movie so far:

• Liz Kingsman as Shapiro
• James Wright as a CIA agent
• James Ortiz as Rocky
• Robert James Smith as a scientist
• Milana Vayntrub
• Lionel Boyce
• Ken Leung
• Bastian Antonio Fuentes
• Isla McRae

Gosling will also be producing the movie with Weir, Lord, Miller, Aditya Sood, Rachel O'Connor, and Amy Pascal.

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Does Project Hail Mary have a trailer?

Amazon MGM Studios unveiled the official trailer for Project Hail Mary on Monday, March 30, 2025. The 3-minute trailer offers the first look at Ryan Gosling's character, in all his long-haired, bearded glory, light years away from his apartment, shouting:

"I just woke up from a coma. And I'm not an astronaut."

Unlike the book's description, Gosling's Ryland Grace seems to know his name, although he appears bewildered and has no idea what he's doing in space. The rest of the trailer explains the reason for Ryland's interstellar mission: the sun and the rest of the stars, except one, are slowly dying.

He's a middle school science teacher with a doctorate in molecular biology who had been recruited, along with a team, to go to the lone uninfected star system, Tau Ceti, to investigate and find something useful that can help save every living thing on Earth.

In the mysterious star system, Ryland discovers the strange substance that slowly diminishes the sun and the other stars' light. He also discovers something more, as Gosling's character teases at the end of the sci-fi movie's trailer, where he says:

"So I met an alien. He's kind of growing on me. At least he's not growing in me, which was a concern for a little while."

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Catch Project Hail Mary in cinemas nationwide and on IMAX on March 20, 2026.

Edited by Kinette Sumadia