Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s “Project Hail Mary,” starring Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller, began production in the United Kingdom during the last week of May. It’s now been confirmed that production has wrapped up the five-month shoot — that’s 145 days. The film is going to have a long phase in post-production as it’s only set for release on March 20, 2026.
The space film, an adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, and written by Drew Goddard, tells the story of an Earth slowing inching towards doomsday. Science teacher Ryland Grace (Gosling) is tapped to help solve this issue and embarks on a space-bound expedition to save the human race.
Weir sold the book's film rights to MGM in early 2020 for $3M. Then, in March 2020, Gosling signed on to star and Lord/Miller to direct. Goddard, who previously adapted Weir's debut novel, “The Martian,” joined the project in July 2020.
“Project Hail Mary” is set to be Lord and Miller’s first directorial effort since exiting “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” This means that the last film they directed was 2014’s “22 Jump Street.” However, they have been producing plenty of films since then and co-wrote films such as “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.”
Lord and Miller began directing ‘Solo’ only to be fired by Lucasfilm, after over four-and-a-half months of filming, about three-quarters through principal photography. Lucasfilm stated that the firing was due to "creative differences,” while EW reported that Lord and Miller were going off-script and trying to make the film into more of a comedy. Two days later, Ron Howard was announced as their replacement.
A few months later, Lord/Miller commented on their departure from ‘Solo’:
The experience of shooting the movie was wonderful. We had the most incredible cast and crew and collaborators. [...] We're really proud of the work we did on the movie and we wish everybody the best.
This past August, Puck reported that Sony would not be renewing its contract with Lord/Miller after both parties "endured a heated fight” over the budget of the upcoming Nicolas Cage led series “Spider-Noir.” This kind of creative chaos has been a constant in Lord/Miller’s career. I feel like a version of this story comes out every time they’re involved with a new project. Then again, barring any future bombshell trade reporting, it does look as though things have gone much smoother for them on “Project Hail Mary.”
The result of all of this chaos is that Lord/Miller haven’t directed a film in over 10 years. They’ve instead turned into producing movies such as “Cocaine Bear,” “The Lego Movie 2,” “The Mitchells vs The Machines,” “Strays” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.