Project Hail Mary star Ryan Gosling had Hall H in stitches Saturday afternoon at Comic-Con 2025.
In addition to Gosling, author Andy Weir and screenwriter Drew Goddard were on today’s dais with Lord and Miller in conversation with Joshua Horowitz. When asked about the efforts for scientific accuracy in the film Lord and Miller described exact velocity to set-building. Later on in the panel, they jokingly teased that no amount of discomfort was too far for Gosling, whether he needed to hang from wires or be smothered in Vaseline.
“I was sent the manuscript from the greatest scientific mind of our time. And he’s sitting right next to me! No pressure,” Gosling said of Weir. “I knew it would be brilliant because it’s Andy, but nothing could prepare me for what he’d come up with this time. It showed me things I had never seen. It was as heartbreaking as it was funny. I was not just blown away, but also overwhelmed. This story is about a scared guy who has to do something impossible. Now I was a scared guy who had to do something impossible. I called Andy, we became blood brothers. Not really, but we would’ve.”
“What do you do when you need to do something impossible? You get Amy Pascal to produce it with you. And you try to get the only two visionary directors that could bring this to life with you — It’s unfair to call them visionaries, they’re more like wizards,” Gosling added of directors Phil Lord and Christopher.
Gosling also exclaimed. “We’re not in Hall B, not in Hall C, what Hall are we in? What’s the H for? It’s for Hail Mary!
In Project Hail Mary, Gosling plays science teacher Ryland Grace, who wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.
Four clips, all from the first third of the movie, were shown in Hall H, the first being the opening of the film in which Gosling’s Grace is extracted from his induced coma, unable to summon his voice to answer the question “What is 2+2?” asked by a woman’s voice. The same voice then warns him that bodily functions have not been restored yet as he scoots forward like a worm, looking like “a space caveman in a placenta onesie” according to Gosling, who hopes to see a costume modeled after this at next year’s Con. Grace contorts his body in all types of somersaults to check on another person on the ship, who hasn’t made it from the looks of their pale, stiff body.
The second clip showed Gosling’s character meeting Sandra Hüller’s Eva. He’s brought into a lab to test a specimen in a hazmat suit. After nothing happens for a bit and a lot of the suits watching fall asleep while he works, Gosling’s Grace gets excited: It’s a tiny alien cell. But then “Uh oh, it died.”
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Horowitz also asked Gosling about Grace being a “reluctant hero.”
“I connected to his reluctance. I’m reluctant to answer this question. Aside from the fact that he has a doctorate in molecular biology, he’s quite an ordinary person and in this extraordinary situation,” Gosling said. “What is so inspiring about him is that he reacts to a lot of things as I feel like I might or a lot of us might. He’s terrified, appropriately, of the task at hand. He’s somebody who, on earth, has given up on himself and has been given this opportunity to believe in himself again.”
In the third clip, Grace’s ship stops, he hits Zero G and Gosling shrieks. Things get more serious as “Mary” warns Grace of some type of object detected. Viewers ultimately see the stretched out rocklike specimen shown in the trailer, known as Rocky.
How does Rocky stand up as a scene partner? Gosling attempted to pass on the question.
“It’s too soon to talk about Rocky,” the Oscar-nominated actor said. “He’s my friend and he’s not here to speak for himself, so I don’t want to give up his secrets.”
The directors used puppeteers to form Rocky in order create a life-like, empathetic character who could interface with Gosling – even though the alien doesn’t have a face or expressions. They called Gosling the sixth puppeteer.
The final clip shown in Hall H watched Gosling’s astronaut make first contact with Rocky, who does have five legs and the ability to create model sculptures that Grace interprets are of him and his ship. Readers will know of the encounter. Gosling brings his chemistry, and maybe some leftover Kenergy, to the curiosity of communicating with the alien.
Why is Project Hail Mary here at Comic-Con and not Amazon MGM Studios’ big fanboy and girl movie The Masters of the Universe? (June 5, 2026). We’re told that movie just finished shooting.
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Project Hail Mary‘s first trailer, as Deadline first reported, drew 400M global views in its first week, the most viewed trailer ever for an original movie (not based on IP). The movie, which also stars Milana Vayntrub, The Bear‘s Lionel Boyce and more, blasts off in theaters on March 20, 2026.
