THE ARC'S TAKE

This episode's argument is that Project Hail Mary only pretends to be hard sci-fi about a dying sun — strip away the spaceships and it's La La Land with an alien, and our real case is that the film's quiet radical move isn't the science, it's refusing to make the alien the villain.

EPISODE SUMMARY

We watch Project Hail Mary — Ryan Gosling's big-budget adaptation of Andy Weir's bestselling novel (from The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard and the directing team behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street) — and argue that despite the dying sun and one-way space mission, it's really "La La Land in space": a small, character-driven love story wrapped in a huge movie. Expect a close read of the alien sidekick Rocky (voiced by Meryl Streep), a debate over whether Gosling was miscast against the book's nerdier protagonist, and a real appreciation for a sci-fi film that, for once, doesn't make its aliens the enemy. No prior podcast knowledge, book-reading, or even movie-liking required — just come for the argument.

WHERE TO WATCH

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Prime Video (streaming with subscription, as of July 3)
• MGM+ (streaming with subscription)
• Apple TV (rent or purchase)
• Fandango at Home (rent or purchase)

The rollout here is a little bureaucratic for a movie about a guy racing to save the sun: Project Hail Mary premiered on Prime Video on July 3, a 105-day theatrical window, after hitting MGM+ first on June 18 as part of Amazon's traditional windows system moving from theaters to PVOD to the pay-one MGM+ window. So if you caught it on MGM+ two weeks ago, congrats on being an early adopter of "the obscure streaming service" — it's finally graduated to the app basically everyone already has.

New To The Show?

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

A Long Summary

Project Hail Mary is Amazon MGM's adaptation of Andy Weir's novel — the guy who wrote The Martian — directed by the Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street team, shot by Greg Fraser, and starring Ryan Gosling, who acquired the rights before the book was even published because he and Weir share an agent. The premise: the sun is dimming, another ice age is coming, and Earth's only hope is a middle-school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship twelve light-years from home with amnesia and, eventually, a rock-shaped alien named Rocky for company. It's a thousand-page novel that occurs mostly inside one man's head, compressed into a sub-three-hour buddy comedy — and against the odds, it works. Weir has gone on record calling this and The Martian "very, very different" stories. Two men stuck in space. Okay, Andy.

We came at this one sideways: Jaclynn brought it to the arc because she'd just been on a first double date with Robby's group of "normal, cool Americans who like cool movies" — the couple picked the film, Jaclynn played it cool and did the one thing no podcaster has ever done, which is not immediately mention she has a podcast. The through-line of our conversation is the argument between reading the book first or going in blind — Robby says know nothing, let the surprises land; Cole says for this one know everything, because the movie is doing more than you'll catch cold; Jaclynn splits the difference by reading fifty pages and then quitting, which we all somehow agreed was correct. Along the way you get Cole sitting arms-crossed judging it like it's Casablanca until the moment he gives up and worships at its feet, the Meryl Streep cameo that cost a fortune and was worth every cent, the puppeteer from Into the Woods' cow who voices Rocky, and a genuinely good point about how rare it is for an American film to make aliens a friend instead of a stand-in for whoever we've decided to be afraid of that decade.

We also got into the parts of the book the film smooths over — the non-consensual coma, the relativity that breaks Rocky's brain, the fact that a man with no family is a very convenient hero to throw at a suicide mission — and whether any of us would've gone back to Earth or stayed. Jaclynn's bringing the seven-pound dog. Robby's a better husband than the rest of us combined. And Dad, for the record, would absolutely not come get you, because one time Jaclynn took three days to reply to a message he sent from the top of an Alaskan glacier — she was in Russia, the time difference was wild, and she couldn't stop listening to Childish Gambino. Some grudges follow you twelve light-years.

CREATIVES

• Phil Lord — Director; Producer — also: The Lego Movie (2014), 21 Jump Street (2012), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• Christopher Miller — Director; Producer — also: The Lego Movie (2014), 22 Jump Street (2014), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• Drew Goddard — Screenwriter — also: The Martian (2015)
• Ryan Gosling — Producer — also: La La Land (2016), Barbie (2023), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
• Amy Pascal — Producer — also: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Little Women (2019)
• Aditya Sood — Producer — also: The Martian (2015)
• Rachel O'Connor — Producer — also: 22 Jump Street (2014)
• Greig Fraser — Cinematographer — also: Dune (2021), The Batman (2022), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
• Daniel Pemberton — Composer — also: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

CAST

• Ryan Gosling — Ryland Grace — also: Blade Runner 2049 (2017), La La Land (2016), Drive (2011)
• Sandra Hüller — Eva Stratt — also: Anatomy of a Fall (2023), The Zone of Interest (2023), Toni Erdmann (2016)
• James Ortiz — Rocky (voice/performer) — also: Into the Woods (2014)
• Milana Vayntrub — Olesya Ilyukhina — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Ken Leung — Yao — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Lionel Boyce — Carl — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Priya Kansara — Mary — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)

SOURCE MATERIAL

The film Project Hail Mary is based on a 2021 hard science fiction novel by American writer Andy Weir that centers on science teacher and former biologist Ryland Grace, who wakes up aboard a spacecraft, afflicted with amnesia. You can find the novel here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611060/project-hail-mary-by-andy-weir/

Bookshop.org search link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Project%20Hail%20Mary

FUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA

Here are five solid, confirmed production trivia items about Project Hail Mary:

1. The puppeteer voicing Rocky was never supposed to be the final voice.

Rocky was brought to life by theater puppeteer James Ortiz, who wasn't hired to voice Rocky but acted as the working voice on set so Gosling could have a scene partner speaking to him. He recited Rocky's dialogue for actor Ryan Gosling to play against, believing the lines would be replaced by a more famous actor, but directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller kept his performance in the film. Ortiz is also the same artist who designed the Milky White cow puppet for the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/james-ortiz-project-hail-mary-rocky-interview-1236553879/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ortiz)

2. Meryl Streep's cameo voice was a real, unpublicized favor.

During the scene where Grace tests translation voices for Rocky, one of the rejected options is genuinely Meryl Streep — producer Amy Pascal had done "The Post" and many, many movies with her, and after they asked, she said yes, and did many different versions of the line. Director Phil Lord admitted "You have never seen a group of filmmakers procrastinate longer" before working up the nerve to ask her. [Source]

3. The film's first assembly cut ran nearly four hours and was called "embarrassing" by other filmmakers.

Lord and Miller subjected some filmmaker friends of theirs to a three hour and 45-minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing, and the feedback the directing duo got was unanimous: "Get it way shorter." Miller noted "You just don't know how the scenes are going to land with an audience... We thought everything was charming, but some of those charming things didn't land. It made it really easy to get it down to three hours." [Source]

4. Sandra Hüller's karaoke scene wasn't in the script at all — Gosling overheard her singing in real life.

Gosling explained: he just happened to hear Hüller singing to herself and became convinced that she needed to bring that talent to the movie — he'd heard her beautiful voice down the hallway on an aircraft carrier and asked if she could sing in the film. Hüller overcame her fear and tried to find a song overnight, finding a Harry Styles song, and tried to learn it overnight — the rights were secured and the scene shot the very next morning. (https://gizmodo.com/project-hail-mary-karaoke-scene-sandra-huller-ryan-gosling-2000738133, https://screenrant.com/project-hail-mary-karaoke-scene-improvised/)

5. The production largely avoided green screen, building a real practical spaceship set.

Director Phil Lord clarified: green screen is sometimes used in lieu of building sets or figuring out locations/lighting in advance, which can be noticeable if not done carefully, and is something they didn't want to do — they built the entire interior of the Hail Mary ship, with puppeteers working through a raised floor for Rocky's scenes, while wide space exteriors were handled digitally by ILM and Rocky was a seamless blend of puppetry and animation from Framestore. [Source]

WHAT THEY DID NEXT

Since Project Hail Mary (2026) is the episode subject, Phil Lord and Chris Miller's next confirmed project after it is a new whodunit adaptation.

Here's what's confirmed since Project Hail Mary:

Phil Lord (with longtime partner Chris Miller) is bringing a classic whodunnit to the big screen, according to IndieWire, specifically a "Murder, She Wrote" movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis, which has set a 2027 holiday release with The Hollywood Reporter.

Drew Goddard is heading into the Matrix franchise: in April 2024, a new "Matrix" movie was announced to be in the works, with Drew Goddard writing and directing, per The Hollywood Reporter. Goddard has been tapped to write and direct a new Matrix feature for Warner Bros., marking the first Matrix film not to directly involve creators Lana and Lilly Wachowski, though Lana Wachowski will serve as an executive producer.

We haven't covered The Matrix 5 yet — but we probably should.

FAMOUS QUOTES

Here they are:

• "One stellar Gosling + one arachnid-ish alien + one Hail Mary mission = lightning in a spaceship." — critic quote, Rotten Tomatoes consensus [Source]
• "While you can't help but marvel at the visuals and applaud the commitment of Gosling's endearing performance, what also makes Project Hail Mary so gosh darn lovable is that it imbues us with child-like wonder from scenes that pay homage to such classics as E.T., Flight of the Navigator and, yes, Rocky." — Randy Myers, The Mercury News (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• "Does it have many original ideas of its own? Perhaps not. But its greatest hits mixtape of other people's has been compiled with such flair – as well as a sound comprehension of why they worked so well the first time – that it's hard not to be swept up regardless." — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• "At almost every turn, Project Hail Mary attempts to convince you that it is groundbreaking, innovative filmmaking." — Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• Owen Gleiberman at Variety was one of the few outright negative voices, calling it "not a very good movie" — Owen Gleiberman, Variety (via https://cinapse.co/project-hail-mary-reviews/)
• "I've known Phil Lord and Chris Miller for a very long time — I've been able to watch their careers from the very beginning; these gents have become giants, retaining their unique, humanistic, hilarious voice all along the way. Project Hail Mary is terrific. Go see this picture." — Scott M. Gimple, via Twitter/X (as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ryan-gosling-project-hail-mary-first-reactions-1236517129/)
• Regarding the directors screening an early cut: "Project Hail Mary Directors Screened a Nearly Four-Hour Cut to Other Filmmakers and Were Told to 'Get It Way Shorter': 'It Was Embarrassing'" — headline describing filmmaker feedback, Variety, reported by Zack Sharf (via Wikipedia citation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))

EXTERNAL RECOMMENDATIONS

Here are a few resources for listeners who want to go deeper on Project Hail Mary:

InSession Film Podcast — "Podcast Review: Project Hail Mary" (insessionfilm.com) — A dedicated movie-podcast episode discussing the film, with us noting they discuss Phil Lord and Chris Miller's film starring Ryan Gosling, offering both praise and some critical pushback — a good companion for listeners who want a more traditional film-critic take.

Hugonauts: The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time — "Project Hail Mary: Book vs Movie" (Apple Podcasts) — This episode is especially useful for the book-to-film comparison angle, as it breaks down the movie version of Andy Weir's novel, comparing the film with the technical problem-solving of the original, and digs into which complex scientific explanations were streamlined for Hollywood pacing.

Rolling Stone — "How Ryan Gosling Ascends to Tom Hanks-Level Movie Stardom in 'Project Hail Mary'" (rollingstone.com) — Not a podcast, but a substantial essay/interview with directors Lord and Miller that directly addresses points raised in the episode, including their explanation for why they cut extra Earth-based relationships from the script: they tried to figure out what relationship Grace was leaving behind on Earth, but packing Earth with relationships that needed resolving wasn't what the book did — this is a story about someone who's lonely on Earth, makes a friend in space, and stays there. It's a great deep-dive for listeners curious about the adaptation choices the podcast hosts debated (especially the ending and Gosling's casting).

RELATED ARC EPISODES

ARC_HOBBES_SHAW — Both involve directors/franchises connected to the "Lego movie guys" lineage of action-comedy filmmaking (Hobbs & Shaw shares the same buddy-comedy-wrapped-in-a-blockbuster sensibility we explicitly compare Project Hail Mary to via 21/22 Jump Street).

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

Pengun Random House interview with Andy Weir:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H_srBMz4JQ