Project Hail Mary got a soft launch at CinemaCon.
The Phil Lord and Christopher Miller film got a share of the spotlight during Amazon MGM Studios’ CinemaCon presentation on Wednesday night inside the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. It actually got prime position in kicking off the studios’ inaugural presentation with a cold open that went straight into exclusive footage that lasted several minutes.
Based on The Martian scribe Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, Project Hail Mary follows middle school science teacher Ryland Grace (Gosling) who wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He must figure out how to complete his interstellar mission to save Earth from an astronomical catastrophe completely alone, until he meets a mysterious alien who has traveled light years to save his own species from the same fate. Drew Goddard adapted the novel for the screen.
Gosling will star opposite Oscar nominated star of Anatomy of a Fall Sandra Hüller. Gosling is also producing the film with Lord, Miller, Amy Pascal, Aditya Sood, Rachel O’Connor and Weir. The executive producer roster includes Patricia Whitcher, Drew Goddard, Sarah Esberg, Lucy Kitada, Nikki Baida and Ken Kao.
News of Gosling boarding the project as star and producer broke way back in March 2020, and came a little more than a year before the novel was published by Random House. It was brought into MGM during the days when Michael De Luca led the studio, and before the studio was acquired by Amazon.
Project Hail Mary, set for release on March 20, 2026, will mark a return to space for the Oscar nominated actor who played Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle’s First Man.
CinemaCon, the annual gathering of cinema owners and Hollywood studios, is hosted in Las Vegas by the newly rebranded Cinema United, which for decades was known as the National Association of Theatre Owners. This year’s edition runs from March 31 to April 3.