2025 has lots of excellent-looking movies still on the way but Wednesday night at CinemaCon, MGM played the first footage from what may end up being the sci-fi event of 2026: Project Hail Mary.
Based on a novel by Martian author Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie) and though it won’t be out until March 2026, we saw an extended trailer that set the tone, laid out the story, and teased what makes this such a special story.
In the footage, we meet Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a college professor at what appears to be a rather small school. A woman named Eva (Sandra Hüller) comes into his classroom and asks him if he wrote a specific paper. He says he did, but he was fired for it. Well, it seems, his theories could be useful because the rumors everyone has heard on Earth are true. The Sun is dying. He’s whisked off by Eva to help.
“This is Project Hail Mary,” Eva says as she and Ryland enter a massive room filled with very smart-looking people. Later, Eva explains that the sun isn’t the only star that’s dying. Many stars are all showing a pattern of infection across the universe, except one. A plan is in place, but Ryland almost can’t believe it so he lays it out. It involves near-light-speed travel that doesn’t exist and travelling so many miles the astronauts will never make it home. He’s told it’s that or the entire world dies.
“Who is gonna sign up for that?” Ryland asks. And everyone is quiet, staring at him. He can’t believe it. He’s not an astronaut, but Eva says they say they don’t need an astronaut, they need an expert. “I put the ‘not’ In astronaut,” he says. “You have the right stuff, but I have the wrong stuff.”
As you can guess, Ryland goes into space anyway. There are some super cool images of the ship in a deep, dark nothing. He wakes up out of a sleep with a big beard. We see him doing a bunch of weird stuff on the ship. He floats into space for a second. Eventually, the ship enters a shimmering pink area and, on the other side, we see another spaceship.
This other ship looks like it’s almost made out of wood. Very thin, sharp pieces of wood, all stacked on top of each other. It slows down next to Ryland’s ship. Out shoots a small cylinder. Ryland freaks out that the ship is sending him something. He thinks it’s a bomb but, when it just bounces off his ship, he realizes it’s a message.
We see the ships connect and Ryland go into the alien ship, which is much more biological than Ryland’s. “Anybody home?” he asks as he drops in a light. But then the light comes back. He gets to a window at the end of the tunnel and a two-fingered hand touches the window.
Cut to Ryland doing a video. “So, I met an alien,” he says. “And he’s growing on me. Not in me, which was at one point a concern.” There are a few more shots of Ryland seemingly working with the alien though we don’t see it, and that’s that.
It was an extended trailer that certainly felt like it was a lot of the movie but, having read the book, it’s really only about half of it. So much more happens, and we can’t wait to see it all play out. It opens on March 20, 2026.
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