The Secret Sauce Behind Project Hail Mary's Success (According to Us)

Header image credit: Amazon MGM Studios

Project Hail Mary is officially Amazon MGM’s highest grossing film ever - and it's a sci-fi full of hope and faith in the future of humanity. Are the two things related?

The recent box office hit, Project Hail Mary, is based on Andy Weir’s (The Martian) novel of the same name, and is set in a version of our world where the sun is dying. The story follows Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling),  a high school teacher beckoned to save Earth from extinction, together with his unexpected alien ally, Rocky (a genius co-lead character might we add!).

You can of course argue that the film’s success is a tribute to its stellar cast, led-by Ryan Gosling, and Andy Weir’s anticipated return to screen after The Martian - but to us, Project Hail Mary’s impact taps into something deeper.

Its commercial AND growing cultural success demonstrates a huge audience appetite for stories that reflect the time of jeopardy we are in without resorting to dystopia, hopelessness or cynical views of humans as competitive and selfish. The film's huge success  proves that a positive future vision can be the secret sauce. It’s a story that shows the way we overcome adversity is through communication, kindness and collaboration across divides (and intergalactic species!). As Rutger Bregman has evidenced, we have succeeded because we are HumanKind.

Time is up for apocalyptic narratives.  In fact, the novel and film deliberately moved beyond dystopian sci-fi tropes, and instead created a vision of the best of humanity in the future, as Ryan Gosling explained in a recent interview:

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A new sci-fi classic?  

In a time when industry headlines decry the decline of cinema-going, Project Hail Mary is already being heralded as a future classic by audiences pouring into cinemas and on popular film reviewing platforms like Letterboxd.

And that is no small praise. From that Ryan Gosling fox cardigan and Rocky’s ‘AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE!’ to iconic costumes, characters and lines - whether a classic or not, at the very least it’s inspiring lively discussions and bringing people together to watch a feel-good story on the big screen.

Storytelling is a galvanising force like none other. Project Hail Mary shows the best of cinema's ability to bring people together, bonding over a shared understanding of what we value, and a sense of collective identity that can emerge through reaching common ground.