Make it a Movie: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

In our Make it a Movie section we play the role of movie producers and map out the movie production. Project Hail Mary is one of the most popular books released in the last couple of years. It boasts a very strong 4.52/5 Good Reads rating and if you ever frequent the book section on Reddit you’ll find no less than a million posts about this book. Andy Weir is best known for his self-published novel, The Martian, which went on to become a blockbuster movie. He’s also written a number of other novels including Artemis, but let’s just say we weren’t the biggest fans of that project. You can check out our Podcast on Project Hail Mary if interested. 

Plot: Project Hail Mary follows the story of Ryland Grace, a biologist and middle school science teacher who is sent into space to save the world. While in space, Ryland is introduced to “Rocky”, a friendly extraterrestrial who he forms almost a buddy cop friendship with. They’re basically Jackie Chan and Chris Rock in Rush Hour, with the translation issues and everything. Eventually they become best of friends. Together they must work to destroy space algae and save both of their planets.

It’s the movie Armageddon, but instead of an asteroid destroying earth it’s space algae and instead of roughnecks Bruce Willis and Benny Affleck, we get a ‘cool’ middle school teacher playing the role of cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz.

Production Notes: The rights to the film were sold for $3 million dollars in 2020, and Ryan Gosling is set to produce and star as Ryland Grace. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (21 & 22 Jump Street, Lego Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) are set to direct and produce the movie.  No other casting decisions have been announced, though Andy Weir did share an April Fools joke about potential casting. Here at the BBC we never fool around about casting suggestions, we’ll help fill the roles for the rest of the movie.

Based on: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Genre: Sci-Fi/Adventure

Logline: Armageddon + E.T.

Proposed Casting for Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Ryland Grace – Ryan Gosling seems to be already set in stone for Ryland, but if that were to fall through we have some backup options. I love me some Ryan Gosling, but Ryland’s character has to be a bit vulnerable, if you read the book, you know he’s kind of a full fledge coward. Eva Stratt nailed it when she said, ‘I like you Ryland, I just don’t respect you’. I have a hard time not respecting Gosling he’s just too smooth, too cool. I was thinking more along the lines of Matt Damon (why not run it back from the Martian?), but my personal favorite is Jake Gyllenhaal. I think Gyllenhaal is one of the best actors out there. He can play both the weird, cowardly scientist and the super hero, which is what this part calls for.

Rocky – A friendly extraterrestrial from the 40 Eridani System. It’ll be interesting to see how the movie portrays the language of Rocky since in the book it’s basically a series of beeps and boops that Ryland deciphers and then communicates back through his computer. My guess is they’ll have Rocky learn English in the movie so it’s not just R2D2 type beeps and Ryland translating for us throughout the movie. There is really only one person that can take on this role, and that is the GOAT at bringing non-human charters to life, Andy Serkis. From Gollum in Lord of the Rings, to Snoke in Star Wars (what a terrible story line they gave him…), to Caesar in Planet of the Apes and all the roles in-between, Andy Serkis just makes way too much sense for this role. Hat tip to @nicoitaliano13 for the suggestion during the podcast.

Eva Stratt – Eva Stratt is a blunt, results oriented, Dutch woman that heads up the Hail Mary mission. Considering that only the US, China, and Russia have been to space, I did find it a bit odd that these other countries had so much decision making power, but that’s neither here nor there. Stratt needs to be intimidating, smart, and be able to push Rylands buttons. Jody Foster came to mind. She’s a veteran to space/exploration movies (Contact) and her character in the movie Inside Man was who I was picturing for Eva Stratt for some reason.