Project Hail Mary, the Ryan Gosling space thriller that became one of the year’s biggest box office surprises, is heading to streaming, and viewers won’t have long to wait.
The film adaptation of Andy Weir’s best-selling novel will arrive on MGM+ on 18 June, with the most affordable way to watch being through Prime Video’s MGM+ add-on, which currently offers a free trial.
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative duo behind The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the film follows Ryland Grace, played by Gosling, as he wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there, tasked with a near-impossible mission to save Earth.
Sandra Hüller plays Eva Stratt, while puppeteer James Ortiz brings to life Rocky, the alien companion at the heart of the film’s most beloved moments.
The screenplay was written by Drew Goddard, marking his second adaptation of a Weir novel after his work on The Martian in 2015.
When asked about collaborating with Lord and Miller, Goddard said the pair “thrive in finding the humanity inside of these crazy characters”, which, given the film’s emotional core, proved essential.
The numbers tell their own story.
Project Hail Mary launched with $80.5 million at the box office in March, Amazon Studios’ biggest opening ever, previously held by Creed III, and has since grossed $680 million globally.
It held the record for the year’s largest debut until it was overtaken by Universal’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
The film also caught the attention of NASA in a rather fitting way.
Less than a month after its release, the space agency launched Artemis II, its mission to send a crew further from Earth than any human has travelled since Apollo 13.
Before lift-off, the four-person crew watched Project Hail Mary, with Gosling later sending them a video message of support.
As for a sequel, author Weir told Den of Geek he might write one someday, though it is not currently in development.
He has ideas for an expanded storyline, he said, but nothing “that’s good enough to run with yet.”
