Warner Bros., Sony, Netflix, and Apple will not have trailers appearing during the Super Bowl broadcast. What you can expect are titles such as “The Mandalorian & Grogu,” “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” “Michael,” “Minions 3,” “Toy Story 5,” and “Disclosure Day.”
Additionally, here’s the latest “Project Hail Mary” trailer, clocking in at 2 minutes 44 seconds — and, beware, it contains SPOILERS.
Then again, I wouldn’t call the presence of Rocky that big of a twist — the relationship is a key part of the story, and showing it might lure more ticket buyers. At its core, “Project Hail Mary” will be a buddy movie. Amazon/MGM knows this, and that’s also why they’ve announced “puppeteer and performer” James Ortiz will be playing Rocky.
The book’s author, Andy Weir, has also released a statement confirming that he doesn’t think the presence of Rocky in the new trailer is a spoiler. The character is introduced fairly early in the book, and it would have been hard to market the film by only showing footage from the first act.
Regardless, Amazon/MGM may have a hit with this movie, which is currently tracking at $45M for its opening weekend. The budget is said to be $150M, and the runtime is 2 hours and 36 minutes.
The film marks Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s first time directing a feature since their infamous departure from “Solo: A Star Wars Story” back in 2017. Their last completed directorial effort remains “22 Jump Street” (2014), though they’ve stayed busy on the producing and writing front with projects like “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and “The LEGO Movie 2.”
“Project Hail Mary” hits theaters March 20 via Amazon/MGM. There already seems to be Oscar buzz around this one — in a few weeks’ time, we’ll know just how trustworthy those test screenings were.