Project Hail Mary: New Trailer Shows a Teacher Turned Astronaut

The Martian is one of the rare films that is simultaneously suspenseful, humorous, and (unexpectedly) touching. Matt Damon’s 2015 adaptation of Andy Weir’s first novel kept viewers on the edge of their seats while also making them laugh and, in some cases, cry. Ridley Scott’s big-screen vision earned awards, decent money, and a lot of appreciation. When news of a Weir adaptation sequel arrived, this time based on his 2021 bestseller Project Hail Mary, fans of hard science fiction with an emphasis on character development naturally got excited.

The project’s first trailer is now available, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios, and it’s a doozy. The Martian’s sweet spot of scientific inquiry, existential dread, and grim levity is already in place. This is space-drama material on a huge scale from start to finish, both in terms of money and intellectual ambition. The set is in space, after all. With Gosling as the lead, Goddard scripting, and Lord and Miller set to direct, Project Hail Mary has many of the elements that suggest a genre-movie classic.

Amazon MGM was interested in the material before Weir even released the novel for sale. In other words, the film rights were purchased well before anyone could see the adaptation and before the screenplay was written and Goddard was signed. Weir’s earlier adaptation, The Martian, was well-adapted and sharp, earning Goddard an Oscar nomination for his efforts. The team at Amazon MGM no doubt saw a natural fit in reuniting with Goddard to translate Project Hail Mary to the screen.

Lord and Miller, meanwhile, might be an odd choice to helm hard sci-fi, but their résumé is nothing if not a hodgepodge of slapstick and soppiness. The pair directed the animated hit Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs before shifting to live-action blockbusters like The LEGO Movie. Their past endeavors may not be in the same arena as Weir’s intellectually heavy science fiction, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do justice to the material.

Project Hail Mary follows Ryland Grace, a mild-mannered middle school science teacher played by Gosling. He finds himself awakening on a spaceship he can’t remember boarding, crying out for help as an unknown spaceship flies away from him in orbit. As he realizes he’s light-years away from his apartment on Earth, Grace attempts to grasp what happened to him. Memory starts to flood back as Grace’s flashbacks to Earth life depict him as a clean-shaven and presentable teacher, his students gathered around. Grace’s attention is soon drawn to a suited figure (whose face we never see) as Grace is presented with a mission of cosmic proportions.

The sun is dying. Not Earth, but the Sun itself. We see multiple other stars in the solar system go out one by one, except for a single one in a patch of white, indicating there’s some kind of light show being produced by a being or things in space. Scientists don’t know what’s causing it, but they think the event is why Earth’s star is suddenly burning out. Grace may hold the answer. The former molecular biologist is sought after to figure out what’s causing it and how to fix it.

Grace is no fan, however. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” the teacher says to his mission recruiters. “I can’t even moonwalk!” Regardless, it seems Grace has no choice as he’s been forcibly signed up and launched into space. His wife files for divorce, but before he leaves Earth, Grace tells his students that he’s probably not coming back. It’s a tough sentiment, but life or death. Grace is then thrown into boot camp for a crash-course space mission, getting trained before leaving Earth orbit.

Astonishingly, he awakens from stasis on the ship with amnesia and a great distance from his former home. A passing moment suggests the rest of Grace’s crew are dead. The real revelation? He’s on a mission with an alien, a discovery he’s forced to make. When he first encounters the little lifeform, his words are quick to betray fear and panic as the little green body approaches him. It’s an alien form of life no one on Earth had ever seen. Rocky, as he’s dubbed by Grace in one of the character’s catchier lines, is just a small green globe. But he’s friendly!

“We need to bond,” Grace is recorded saying to the lifeform, teaching him about the universal gesture of thumbs-up. “It might be the only human he ever sees.” Grace’s reluctant and tense journey to space might not be what the former teacher bargained for, but Project Hail Mary is shaping up to be an exceptional sci-fi epic. If this trailer is to go by, the balance between space-adventure tension and earthbound humor should be just as sweet as The Martian.