- Project Hail Mary‘s first trailer has been released
- It shows Ryan Gosling as a 6th-grade science teacher who “can’t even moonwalk” sent to save Earth
- Amazon MGM Studios will release the movie in March 2026
The first trailer for Project Hail Mary is here, giving us our first look at what the new sci-fi action-adventure film has in store for us and it looks like everything I could have hoped for from this book adaptation.
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, and products of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), the upcoming movie will see Ryan Gosling (Barbie) play confused science teacher Ryland Grace who wakes up in spaceship light years away from Earth without any memory of how he got there.
As Grace slowly regains his memory, he begins to piece together that he’s been sent on a last-ditch mission to find out what’s been making our galaxy’s sun die. But there’s still a lot of unanswered questions like, why has a science teacher been sent to rescue the planet? Can he solve the world-ending problem in time? And what is the unknown life form that’s in space with him?
Drew Goddard has adapted the screenplay from Andy Weir’s novel, which is the second Weir adaptation following The Martian – and looking at the trailer, it seems like a lot of the book’s comedy elements have been kept in the script, which is great to see as Gosling’s sly sense of humor is ideal for this role.
Going by the brief clips we have of Gosling in the trailer, it looks like the wry comedy from the diary cams that we saw in The Martian will also be a part of Project Hail Mary.
This marks the first trailer for Project Hail Mary to be released as part of the movie’s promotion. Amazon MGM Studios previously revealed that the new Ryan Gosling sci-fi movie will be released on March 20, 2026, in a poster it unveiled last Friday (June 27), ramping up even more excitement for this sci-fi spectacle.
The big sci-fi movies coming in 2026
It’s not just Project Hail Mary that sci-fi fans have to look forward to next year. From, Dune: Messiah – Denis Villeneuve’s final movie in the blockbuster trilogy – to Jon Favreau’s big-screen version of Star Wars’ The Mandalorian, 2026 is shaping up to be a big year for new movies in the genre.
Marvel theoretically has two films from Marvel Phase 6 coming throughout the year, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day in July and Avengers: Doomsday in December – though we’ll see if anything changes there, since originally Doomsday was supposed to come out first.
In June, DC will take centre stage as Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is expected to fly into cinemas along with another superhero flick inspired by a DC comic book, Masters of the Universe. Amazon MGM Studios’ live-action adaptation of the He-Man world is being directed by Travis Knight (Bumblebee).
In fact, it seems Amazon’s movie-making business is behind a lot of the new sci-fi offerings that are coming to theaters in 2026, as it’s also involved in Timur Bekmambetov’s (Wanted) upcoming sci-fi thriller Mercy starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson.
Even Steven Spielberg is stepping back into the genre with a new film that many reportedly speculate will be a UFO adventure. All we know so far is that the untitled project is due to be released in 2026 and that it will star Emily Blunt, Domingo, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth and Eve Hewson.
Looking at the schedule of what’s been announced so far, Project Hail Mary will be among the first new sci-fi movies to watch in 2026 (Mercy is lined up for a January release), kicking off a space opera feast for the eyes.