Another book to read before you see the movie, for good reason – “Project Hail Mary”

On March 20, 2026, the film Project Hail Mary will be released by Amazon MGM Studios (United States and Canada) and Sony Pictures Releasing International (International). The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and produced by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Ryan Gosling, Andy Weir, and others. It is based on the very successful Science Fiction novel of the same name by Andy Weir. It stars Ryan Gosling and James Ortiz in the lead roles.

So. Exciting news. Can hardly wait. Not!

But why not?

Ownership of characters

I loved Andy Weir’s novel the first time that I read it, in November 2021, before it became a hit, and before it was entered for a Hugo Award for Science Fiction, in 2022. I don’t want the world that Weir created to change. I visualized the novel in my way, and I don’t think I could cope with seeing it visualized in a different way.

I am the worst kind of fan – I feel some kind of ownership for these characters. As I wrote in an earlier post on fan fiction, “…the question for authors to consider in this brave new world of mimicry, both professional and otherwise, is to what extent they consider their characters to be theirs and theirs alone.” The answer is, not a great extent, once a book has been published, and depending on how the authors sells the rights to the material.

Here’s my review – link below. Clearly, I was very taken with it.

A winner of an alien – Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

What is so special about Project Hail Mary?

I was so fascinated by the protagonists that Weir had created for the novel, “Dr. Ryland Grace”, and “Rocky”, and their connection in the outermost reaches of the solar system, that I was inspired to produce and release two songs about that. The songs are on my album, Ticket to Mars; called Starbase, We Had a Problem and Hello (First Contact).

I chose to write songs, rather than, for instance, make fan-art, because Rocky and Grace communicate by using musical notes (the musical frequency equivalents of sounded letters and numerals) in Rocky’s language, invented by Weir, called “Eridian”.

This is not low-key, shallow stuff. This novel is intense, deep, and really thrilling. It contains many references to concepts in Maths and Physics. But I have rarely been as entertained by a Sci-Fi novel.

Oh no – a movie!

The book became a success story for Weir, and then, Amazon/MGM got it, and the film is about to be sprung on the world. The mere idea of it fills me with foreboding. Mainstream filmmakers often leave out the darker messages and philosophical conundrums found in original works, in pursuit of popular appeal.

This novel is long, 496 pages, and there are at least two noticeably tricky aspects to the story:

First, Rocky looks like, and is, a rock. No head, no eyes, no mouth. Just claws. He’s an alien marooned in space, and he’s no hero. Second, Ryland Grace is an angry, panicky former scientist who does not want to be the saviour of the world. He is also marooned in space, a flawed human, not a superhero.

They are not typical lead characters.

But, Weir writes so well that you completely root for both Grace and Rocky by the end of the book. I was literally going “Yaaaayyy!” and I read the ending over and over, I liked it so much.

Translation from book to screen

My worry is, what is going to happen to this well-balanced tale? Which bits of the story did the screenwriter choose to include? What shortcuts did he take, and how, for goodness’ sake, do they portray Rocky, that emo piece of hardened exoskeleton, and his musical communications?

It worries me that on the film posters, they only show Ryan Gosling as Grace (yes, I know he’s an A-lister and the drawcard), and in the 81 promotional stills on IMDB, Rocky is only visible in two pictures, if you know what (or who) to look for, and blurred at that. The novel is not really about Grace and the people he leaves behind on Earth. It focuses almost solely on the relationship between the two protagonists, Grace and Rocky.

I will probably see the film at some point, since Andy Weir is listed as one of the producers, and he has previous experience with big budget movie adaptations from the filming of his novel The Martian. Surely he would have seen to it that the heart of his creation is kept intact? I enjoyed The Martian film (2015), and have watched it more than once. If the translation of that novel to the screen went well, then it can happen again. I hope.

Why read the book?

But, before you watch the movie, do yourself a favour and read the book. You can get away with watching the film version of Hamnet, without having read the novel, because the setting and events are not complicated. Elizabethan England and its historical figures would be familiar to most English-speaking people.

But Project Hail Mary, the novel, is Hard Sci-Fi, Dystopian Sci-Fi, and a bit of Speculative Sci-Fi as well. I wouldn’t call it easy. You will probably need to get your head around it, as I did, before you see the film.

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