Amazon MGM Studios is reaching for the stars with its ambitious new sci-fi dramedy, Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling. The film, which opened with early previews and a robust marketing campaign, is already generating significant buzz both at the box office and among critics. According to Deadline, the movie is projected to earn around $100 million globally in its opening weekend, with a striking 90% of that revenue expected from international markets spanning 82 countries. North America alone is forecasted to contribute over $60 million from 4,000 theaters, with showings in premium formats such as Imax, PLFs, and D-Box, indicating a strong domestic appetite for high-concept science fiction.
These numbers are particularly impressive considering Project Hail Mary is not part of an established franchise. Comparisons have been drawn to Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian. Interstellar achieved a domestic gross of $188 million and $493 million overseas during its initial run, ultimately reaching $773.8 million worldwide with reissues. The Martian, also based on a Weir novel, opened to $54.3 million domestically in 2015. Even if Project Hail Mary falls short of its $60 million North American projection and lands closer to $50 million, it would still mark a significant improvement over last year’s box office leader, Snow White, which opened to $42.2 million.
The film’s production budget stands at a hefty $190 million, making it one of Amazon MGM’s most expensive undertakings to date. Yet, the studio appears confident that Project Hail Mary will be its biggest opener, outpacing the previous record set by Creed III in 2023, which launched with $58.3 million domestically and $100.4 million globally. Such optimism is further buoyed by the film’s critical reception: it boasts a 98% audience score and a 95% certified fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
Directed by the dynamic duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller and produced by an ensemble including Amy Pascal, Rachel O’Connor, Aditya Sood, Andy Weir, and Ryan Gosling himself, the movie has benefited from a carefully orchestrated promotional rollout. Stateside previews in 29 70MM locations sold out, and a Prime early-access screening on March 16, 2026, added to the mounting anticipation. Amazon MGM began building excitement as early as February, with the first footage debuting at CinemaCon the previous April and a show-stopping trailer launch at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2025. That trailer broke records for a non-franchise film, notching over 400 million views—a testament to the enduring appeal of Weir’s storytelling and Gosling’s star power.
Internationally, Project Hail Mary is rolling out in major markets including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Korea, Japan, and China, with later launches planned for Spain, Israel, the Philippines, India, and Malaysia. Sony is handling foreign distribution as Amazon MGM builds its own international arm. However, there are some uncertainties: box office performance in the Middle East may be affected by ongoing instability due to the Iran war, and post-Covid, U.S. films have generally underperformed in Russia, Korea, and China.
The film itself is a bold adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling novel, and as Mashable reports, it takes some creative liberties to streamline the story for the screen. Notably, the movie omits the book’s subplot about selecting astronauts based on a rare coma resistance gene and the plan to power Astrophage production by covering the Sahara Desert in solar panels. Instead, the film focuses tightly on its core trio of characters: Ryland Grace (Gosling), Stratt, and the alien Rocky.
The movie’s ending diverges from the novel in a significant way. While Weir’s book concludes with Grace living on Rocky’s home planet, Erid, and the restoration of the sun’s luminosity only described through Grace’s perspective, the film offers a more hopeful and concrete epilogue. Audiences see Earth’s now-frozen oceans—a stark consequence of the sun’s dimming—before the narrative returns to Stratt, who is revealed to be alive and in receipt of the beetle probes sent by Grace. This new ending, explained by screenwriter Drew Goddard to Mashable, was designed to give Stratt her moment and provide viewers with a sense of optimism about humanity’s recovery. “That’s what’s great about movies. You can cut away, whereas the book stayed with Grace. Once I put [the scene] in, no one questioned it. I was really grateful that they let us do it, because I thought it was really important to see her.”
From a scientific standpoint, Project Hail Mary has drawn praise for its grounded approach to astrophysics, orbital mechanics, and spacecraft engineering. Northeastern University astrophysicist Jacqueline McCleary told Northeastern Global News that the film is “self-consistent” and “falls on the line of close enough to be enjoyable and, more importantly, self-consistent.” She acknowledged that the central conceit—a sun-sucking microorganism called astrophage causing global cooling—is far-fetched, noting the sun’s energy output (1026 Joules per second) and temperatures upwards of 5 million degrees Fahrenheit would make survival for such microbes implausible. Still, the film’s speculative elements, such as the depiction of Rocky, an alien with a radically different biology and communication system based on musical tones, are praised as clever and imaginative.
McCleary was particularly impressed by the design of the spaceship Hail Mary, which uses both traditional rocket propulsion and a detachable spinning section to create artificial gravity—a concept rooted in real-world physics through centrifugal force. She did, however, find the idea of a multi-year induced coma for astronauts unrealistic, humorously noting, “You’d have brain damage.”
Despite these scientific liberties, Project Hail Mary resonates most in its depiction of scientific collaboration. “We like to come together to solve problems or learn something new about the universe,” McCleary said. “You’re willing to bridge wide gaps in order to work together to solve what’s fundamentally an intellectual problem. That was something that read so true to me.” She concluded that, while the film is ultimately a work of fiction, it does an admirable job of exposing audiences to real scientific ideas and might even inspire future scientists.
In addition to Project Hail Mary, this weekend sees the release of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which premiered at SXSW and is expected to debut with $11 million domestically and $3 million overseas. The original film, released in 2019, opened to $8 million and grossed $57.6 million globally on a modest $6 million budget. The sequel, featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Elijah Wood, and Kathryn Newton, has already made waves with the biggest trailer launch in Searchlight Pictures’ history—68 million views in 24 hours—though its early reviews (74% on Rotten Tomatoes) are a notch below the first film’s 89%.
Ultimately, Project Hail Mary stands out not just for its box office prospects, but for its thoughtful blend of science, fiction, and humanity—a rare cosmic alignment in today’s cinematic universe.