Within the early weeks of the pandemic, Ryan Gosling received the manuscript for Project Hail Mary a full yr before The Martian writer Andy Weir published the sci-fi space novel. The actor was hooked. Just because the world was going into lockdown and facing an existential crisis, got here along the story of a scientist and an alien nicknamed Rocky working together, step-by-step, to stop stars from dying across the galaxy. The timing couldn’t be more opportune.
Gosling snapped up the rights to star in and produce a movie adaptation of Weir’s novel. He brought on former Sony studio chief Amy Pascal to assist produce and assemble the important thing pieces in spring 2020, including hiring Phil Lord and Chris Miller to direct, with Drew Goddard later hired to jot down. While the rights project was initially arrange at MGM for $3 million, the official deal agreeing to pony up $190 million to make the film wasn’t closed until after Amazon bought the once-storied studio in 2022.
Six years later, the movie’s record-breaking launch on the worldwide box office couldn’t come at a more opportune time for Amazon MGM Studios, which is getting ready to becoming the primary latest Hollywood major studio in a long time. It’s a feat it is going to accomplish inside the subsequent yr, if not sooner, when former Paramount exec and newly installed president of international distribution Helen Moss completes constructing out a world distribution operation. (Kevin Wilson will proceed to go up domestic distribution.) MGM lost its major status within the early Nineteen Seventies when it became only a domestic distributor. Sony is handling international, for instance, on Hail Mary, while Universal has handled the recent Bond pics and Warners, the Creed series.)
Soon, Amazon MGM will have the opportunity to reap the total advantages of getting a worldwide footprint. That also includes a possible Hail Mary sequel. While there aren’t any official conversations underway between Weir and Amazon MGM, insiders confirm a sequel isn’t out of the query. (The merchandising potential of Rocky, played by James Ortiz, is substantial.)
Each Amazon MGM and reps for Weir declined comment on a follow-up book or movie sequel. But sources near MGM stress that Weir is in the motive force’s seat. The acclaimed writer has never penned a sequel. He’s currently working on a mysterious latest novel that’s unrelated to Hail Mary, but he himself has said he’s toying with potential sequel ideas, but he doesn’t have anything solid enough for a book, yet. (Each Weir and Gosling are repped by CAA.)
Even when it doesn’t birth a franchise, Hail Mary brings a brand new level of credibility to the table by way of Amazon MGM’s standing in Hollywood. It’s the rarest of breeds in becoming an fast box office sensation that few saw coming, considering that sci-fi is some of the difficult genres to sell to general audiences.
The movie is striking a chord with all demos — including families in a serious way — explaining its record-breaking launch over the March 20-22 weekend. Hail Mary opened to $80.5 million in North America alone, the second-best showing in a decade for a non-sequel, non-franchise title behind Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer ($82.5 million). And on March 25, its sixth day in release, it rocketed past $100 million on the domestic box office for an early global total of $150 million.
Moving forward, Amazon MGM, where Courtenay Valenti runs film and Sue Kroll runs worldwide marketing, could prove an attractive landing pad for talent who’re otherwise facing the daunting prospect of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger and fewer homes for his or her projects.
Hail Mary survived several ups and downs in the course of the six years it took to hit the screen. It survived MGM’s 2022 sale to Amazon, which saw MGM co-heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy depart for Warner Bros. following its sale to Discovery. (Hail Mary was arrange at MGM when De Luca was running the studio solo.)
In an ironic accident — at the very least for Hail Mary – Valenti soon left Warners for Amazon MGM. During her three a long time at Warners, the unassuming and keen-eyed production exec spearheaded the Harry Potter franchise together with quite a few other hits. She was also answerable for Margot Robbie’s Barbie, which famously starred Gosling as Ken.
Valenti became Hail Mary’s creative champion and gave the official greenlight to the $190 million project. Kroll also did an extended stint at Warners, and was involved with the marketing of Gravity, one other surprise sci-fi hit. Each execs know Lord and Miller from their time on Warners’ The Lego Movie franchise.
As for the administrators, the duo has a robust relationship with Pascal, who has worked with them dating back to their Cloudy With a Probability of Meatball days at Sony, and more recently, the Spider-Verse movies. The 2 filmmakers even have a robust bond with Weir through Aditya Sood, who discovered The Martian back when it was a self-published novel and he was working at Simon Kinberg’s Genre Movies. (He now runs the duo’s Lord Miller banner as president).
Lord and Miller have hopes of adapting Weir’s second novel, 2017’s Artemis, though they shall be tied up with the ultimate Spider-Verse movie for the subsequent yr, and have half a dozen other projects they’re developing to direct. “There’s an Artemis script; it’s delightful. The thing that was holding that back for years was, how will we execute one-sixth gravity? The story takes place on the moon. We predict we’ve figured it out,” Miller recently told THR.
The ending of Andy Weir’s 2021 novel is subdued, even a little bit melancholy. The film version hits the identical story beats but is more celebratory. The film version makes it easier to assume it being the jumping off point for a second book — and movie.
“Every great franchise starts with a preferred original film,” says Comscore box office analyst Paul Dergerabedian. “The outpouring of interest by audiences in Project Hail Mary and its over-performance on the box office delivers to Amazon MGM what every studio executive dreams of: the rare and elusive newly minted film franchise.”