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Project Hail Mary: Ryan Gosling, a rock alien and a US$200 million gamble
Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Project Hail Mary, is a sci‑fi comedy built on originality and an unlikely friendship
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Ryan Gosling wanted a friend.
Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were in the midst of their largest production ever, the US$200 million science-fiction adventure Project Hail Mary. They were shooting some of the movie’s early scenes, when middle school biology teacher Ryland Grace (Gosling) wakes up in deep space. After realising he is the sole survivor on board the spaceship, he turns depressed and, eventually, drunk.
“Ryan was like, ‘I just feel like I need a friend. I need a scene partner for this. I don’t know what to do in here,’” Miller recalls. “We were like: ‘OK, let’s make a friend.’ So we scoured the set and found a mop and got a dress from the costume department. And we made a little mop friend for him to dance around with.
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“We called it ‘Moppy Ringwald’.”
In their two decades making movies together, Lord and Miller have shown a particular talent in making inanimate objects come alive. They did this especially in 2014’s The Lego Movie, but little in their idiosyncratic filmography, from 21 Jump Street (2012) to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), hasn’t involved some degree of playful reinvention.
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