Project Hail Mary is coming home.
The big sci-fi movie, based on the book by Andy Weir, is set to debut on streaming on streaming ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend. The movie is already one of the biggest box-office hits of the year; as of this writing its the third-highest grossing film in the United States of 2026, behind only The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Michael.
That’s a very impressive result given that it’s based on a best-selling book rather than the biggest video game franchise in history and the most famous pop star of the 20th century.
Project Hail Mary stars Ryan Gosling as a humble scientist and school teacher who is recruited for a mission to fix the Sun after it begins inexplicably dimming. After an accident, he is added to the team that will venture into deep space to investigate the problem. Along the way he meets and make friends with an alien life form he names Rocky because, well, he looks like a big pile of rocks.
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Despite its lack of big-name IP, it’s easy to understand why audiences connected with Project Hail Mary: It’s fun and funny and full of hope for the future, something that’s generally in short supply these days. Despite it’s sci-fi premise, it’s basically a heartwarming buddy movie in space, with two unlikely partners teaming up to save both of their worlds. As I wrote in my review here at ScreenCrush…
The scenes between Grace and Rocky form the soft heart of this hard sci-fi film, which, like the earlier movie based on Weir’s The Martian, is filled with scientists who must problem solve their way out of one can’t-win scenario after another. To leaven all the talk about Periodic tables and relativity, Project Hail Mary’s script (by The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard) turns the film’s middle-section into The Odd Couple in Space, with Gosling as the fussy Felix and a craggy space crab playing the role of Walter Matthau.
Project Hail Mary premieres on Prime Video streaming on July 3. Tomorrow!
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