Project Hail Mary [2025 scifi film]
Brace yourselves, fellow starfarers—Ryan Gosling is about to have a very bad day in zero gravity. The first trailer for Project Hail Mary, the big-budget adaptation of Andy Weir’s best-selling novel, has arrived to remind us that space isn’t so much the final frontier as it is the ultimate venue for a slow-motion existential crisis.
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller—yes, the duo behind The LEGO Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse—this cinematic odyssey promises the same irreverent flair, but with a generous sprinkling of cosmic peril. The screenplay comes courtesy of Drew Goddard, who adapted The Martian into a crowd-pleasing ode to duct tape and potatoes. This time, the stakes are even higher, and presumably less reliant on root vegetables.
In Project Hail Mary, Gosling plays Ryland Grace, an astronaut who wakes up aboard a spacecraft hurtling towards the Tau Ceti system. He has no memory of his name, no idea what he’s supposed to be doing, and no clue why everything smells faintly of recycled air and terror. Over the course of the trailer’s two riveting minutes, it becomes clear he’s humanity’s last hope to stop a mysterious catastrophe from wiping out life on Earth—a minor inconvenience, really.
Joining Gosling on this interstellar voyage are Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt, his formidable superior back on Earth, and Milana Vayntrub, who presumably provides some measure of comfort or at least a bit of banter before the inevitable descent into cosmic despair. The rest of the cast includes Lionel Boyce and Ken Leung, ready to pop up in flashbacks or mission control scenes where everyone looks very stressed in front of big screens.
The trailer is a sleek montage of amnesia-fuelled detective work, haunting shots of Grace’s solitary spacecraft drifting through the void, and just enough glimpses of the novel’s more surprising elements to pique curiosity without spoiling the entire plot. There’s also a faint promise that Ryland might not be entirely alone out there—which should delight anyone hoping for the same sense of camaraderie and science-as-saviour optimism that made The Martian such a hit.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we can’t help but admire Andy Weir’s knack for writing stories that simultaneously celebrate the triumph of human ingenuity and the certainty that you’ll spend most of your life one miscalculation away from certain doom. If the film sticks the landing, it could be the rare blockbuster that makes you feel inspired, terrified, and slightly underqualified to be a functioning adult—all at once.
So mark 20th March 2026 in your diaries, when Project Hail Mary touches down in cinemas and IMAX screens to remind us that no matter how bleak things get, it always helps to wake up with a plan…or at the very least, a clue about who you are.
Tea optional. Oxygen compulsory.
