After Burning Cash, Amazon Finally Scores With ‘Project Hail Mary’
The marketing gambit that paid off — and how Mike & Pam paved the way
It took three months, but 2026 finally has its first significant hit: Amazon’s Project Hail Mary, the year’s top opening ($80.6 million) and the studio’s biggest debut yet (topping Creed III’s $58 million in 2023).
“It’s part of the fun of the box office,” Sean McNulty says. “The business is dead one week, and then it comes back, and it’s revived. So, thankfully, this is one of those weeks.”
First greenlit by Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy in 2020, when the current Warner Bros. film bosses were running Amazon MGM, Project Hail Mary not only jumpstarted Amazon’s fledgling 2026 theatrical slate after misses Melania, Crime 101 and Mercy, but once again proved Ryan Gosling’s movie star bona fides.
“This movie is him. He produced it, and he drove the ship on the back end,” Sean says of the star, whose next big project is Star Wars: Starfighter in 2027. “It’s a good script, and it’s a solid thing, but without that right performance, this would be an entirely different project.”
Based on the novel by Andy Weir and directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the promotional push for Project Hail Mary has been going strong for almost a full year. In fact, Amazon first debuted footage from Project Hail Mary during the studio’s CinemaCon presentation last April, and the early trailers gave away one of the film’s ostensible twists: That Gosling’s character — a school teacher named Ryland Grace, who is sent to space to stop the sun from dying — encounters an alien life form he names “Rocky” (voiced in the film by puppeteer James Ortiz).
“It’s obviously based on a very popular book,” Christopher Rosen says. “But giving away that the alien was going to be a major part of the movie is something I found fascinating. I do think that actually really paid off, because the audience knew what to expect — and for families, it was apparent the alien wasn’t scary.”
“When you have a great movie, that’s great. But there are a lot of times, the marketing can ruin a great movie. They really played that line (by revealing Rocky), and it’s not an easy decision to make,” adds Sean. “So hats off to the Amazon MGM marketing folks. This is their first really big win.”