First Trailer for Project Hail Mary Blends Mystery and Humor

In 2015, the world fell in love with The Martian. The film was thrilling, funny, and unexpectedly touching, and an adaptation of Andy Weir’s surprise best-selling debut novel of the same name. Directed by Ridley Scott and featuring Matt Damon in the lead role, The Martian was met with critical acclaim, box office success, and some awards. In light of that, when the announcement came of a new Weir adaptation, this time of his 2021 bestseller Project Hail Mary, fans of intelligent, character-driven science fiction had every reason to be excited.

Now, Amazon MGM Studios has released the first official trailer for the film, and the vibe looks good. The teaser contains everything from the first book’s heart-pounding combination of science, survival, and humor in equal measure. From the quiet opening to the final shot of the trailer, this is a blockbuster, big-budget, big-ideas kind of space adventure. And with Ryan Gosling in the lead role, Drew Goddard on the script, and filmmaking heavyweights Phil Lord and Christopher Miller at the helm, Project Hail Mary has all the hallmarks of a must-see sci-fi epic.

Amazon MGM picked up the film rights to the book well in advance of the novel’s eventual publication. Before the novel had even hit shelves, the studio had made its move, also signing Goddard to the screenplay for the adaptation. Fans of The Martian will remember Goddard’s intelligent and loyal screenplay for the film adaptation. His adaptation was nominated for an Academy Award, and signing Goddard to the new film was a natural choice for the studio.

A dream team of directors that might raise eyebrows for the hard sci-fi film is Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The dynamic duo has both directed together and separately on a number of projects, most notably Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie. Both comedies proved to be a smash success, the former reaping over $500 million at the global box office. This could be a dream team for Project Hail Mary, as well as the creative team that works to replicate the original Martian’s perfect balance of humor and heart in space.

Gosling will star as Ryland Grace, a soft-spoken middle school science teacher who wakes up in a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there. The trailer wastes no time immersing viewers into the confused panic of Ryland Grace. He quickly surmises that he’s millions of miles away from Earth in deep space, a long way from his home apartment. Flashbacks from his previous life begin to fill the memory gap, showing a clean-shaven Grace back on Earth with his students teaching until he’s approached by a mysterious man at his door.

Grace is recruited for the mission of a lifetime—to save the Earth from extinction. The problem? The Sun is dying. It’s not just on Earth—multiple stars in the local solar system are inexplicably dimming. Only one has bucked the universal trend. Scientists can’t figure out the cause but believe an unknown cosmic force is responsible. As a former molecular biologist, Grace is just the man for the job.

The problem? Grace is not interested in space travel. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” he deadpans in the trailer. “I can’t even moonwalk!” Grace’s self-deprecating attitude and resistance don’t faze Eva Stratt, a hard-nosed higher-up played by Sandra Hüller. Her straightforward sales pitch is simple: “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct.” This could mean losing his students, but as the sole representative of the human race, Grace is given a one-way ticket and reluctantly agrees.