Okay, I’m not sure why this trailer brought on the waterworks, but it did. It could be because my son is righteously so obsessed with Andy Weir‘s third novel, “Project Hail Mary,” and I know how he’s going to react when seeing it.
But really, this second trailer for the Ryan Gosling-starring film really captures the feel of the book. There are flashes of key moments fans will recognize, and we don’t want to get too much into spoiler territory. As you know from the first trailer, Ryland Grace (Gosling) meets an alien while on a mission to save the planet. In this trailer, you get full on views of that alien, and more about what the mission is.
“The idea was no one’s going to walk into that theater and not know about Rocky,” Weir told Polygon. “This is not a Darth Vader is Luke’s father kind of situation. This is a core, central element of the plot that everybody’s going to be talking about and that everybody who’s read the book already knows about. All trailers are designed to put butts in seats, and we want those butts in those seats. We want people to go ‘now I want to know what’s going on.’”
Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (“The LEGO Movie,” “Spider-Verse“) are directing, from a script by Drew Goddard (who also wrote the screenplay for “The Martian“). The great Greig Fraser (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Dune: Part One“) is handling the cinematography, and Daniel Pemberton (“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse“) is scoring the film.
Sandra Hüller, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub, and Liz Kingsman also star.
“Project Hail Mary” will hit theaters March 20th, 2026. (Right between my son’s and my birthday!)
