Film

Project Hail Mary

Name: Project Hail Mary
Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure
Released: 2026
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub

A solitary science teacher wakes up in deep space with no memory of why he's there, and slowly reconstructs a mission to save the sun—and Earth—from a lethal contaminant. Equal parts hard-science puzzle box and buddy movie, it swings from lab-bench ingenuity to genuine tenderness once an unlikely companion turns up. Funny, moving, and built for anyone who wants their apocalypse solved with duct tape and stubbornness.

TMDb rating

8.6

If you liked this

The Martian2015

Same author, same problem-solving DNA: a marooned scientist talks to cameras and solves one impossible crisis after another with duct tape and dark jokes. If you want the tone and rigor of Hail Mary without the alien buddy, start here.

But It's Earth-bound and solo the whole way through, so you lose the first-contact wonder and the emotional two-hander at the center of Hail Mary.

Interstellar2014

Christopher Nolan's cosmic rescue mission trades comic banter for aching scale and time-dilated grief, but shares the same drive: ordinary humans doing extraordinary physics to save everyone back home.

But It's heavier, colder, and far more interested in metaphysics and family than jokes—expect tears, not laughs.

Arrival2016

A quieter, more cerebral first-contact story that swaps banter for linguistics, asking what it actually takes to understand something utterly alien—exactly the puzzle Ryland and Rocky have to crack together.

But It's slow, hushed, and emotionally oblique where Hail Mary is propulsive and warm; some will find it cold by comparison.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

My Octopus Teacher2020

Both are stories about learning to love something that cannot speak your language, built entirely on patience, trust, and shared problem-solving rather than words.

A man teaches himself to communicate with a wild octopus over a year of diving, patiently building trust across an unbridgeable gap—the exact emotional arc Ryland goes through with Rocky, just without the special effects.

But It's a nature documentary, not sci-fi—no spaceship, no plot in the traditional sense, just slow, real, aching intimacy.

Gravity2013

Strip away the alien and the comedy and you get pure survival-in-space dread—one person, dwindling oxygen, and a series of increasingly desperate engineering fixes, told almost in real time.

But There's no companionship here, no jokes, just relentless tension—if you loved the buddy warmth of Hail Mary, this will feel bleak by comparison.

Moon2009

A low-budget, high-intelligence chamber piece about isolation, identity, and what it does to a mind to be entirely alone with a problem only you can solve.

But It's small, slow-burning, and deliberately claustrophobic—nothing like the scale or momentum of Hail Mary's rescue mission.

Apollo 131995

Real astronauts, real crisis, real ingenuity—this is the non-fiction cousin of Ryland's story, engineers solving one impossible problem after another with slide rules and nerve.

But It's grounded and historical rather than speculative—no aliens, no dying sun, just very good procedure and sweat.

Contact1997

Jodie Foster's scientist chases first contact with the same mix of wonder, faith, and rigor that drives Ryland—slower, more philosophical, but built from the same sense of cosmic awe.

But It leans hard into big questions about belief and meaning, and the pace is stately rather than propulsive.

Cast Away2000

Swap the spaceship for an island and you get the same bones: one man, no rescue coming, forced to invent his way through total isolation using whatever's on hand.

But There's no science-solving or alien companionship, just raw, unglamorous survival—closer to Hail Mary's loneliness than its ingenuity.

Sunshine2007

Danny Boyle's crew flies toward a dying sun to reignite it, mixing hard science with slow-building dread—closest in premise to Hail Mary, though far darker in where it ends up.

But The back half swerves into horror territory that has nothing to do with Hail Mary's hopeful tone—go in knowing that shift is coming.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars1964

It's the direct genre ancestor: the same lone-astronaut, science-as-survival structure Hail Mary runs on, done with slide rules instead of software.

A wonderfully earnest, low-tech ancestor of Hail Mary: a stranded astronaut uses raw ingenuity, oxygen math, and sheer stubbornness to survive alone on an alien world, decades before CGI made it easy.

But The effects and pacing are proudly of their era—rubber suits, model shots, and a slowness that modern audiences may find quaint rather than gripping.

The Wandering Earth2019no page yet

Same premise, wildly different register: where Hail Mary is one man's quiet ingenuity, this is that exact crisis blown up into a globe-spanning, emotionally maximal epic.

A Chinese blockbuster about literally moving Earth to save it from a dying sun—same stakes as Hail Mary, cranked into maximalist disaster-movie melodrama with planet-sized engineering and family sacrifice.

But It trades intimate character work for spectacle and sentimentality on a national scale—expect crowds, not a two-hander.