March 20, 2026
Tram Kolluri/Amazon MGM Studios
Ryan Gosling goes to space in 'Project Hail Mary,' the film adaptation of Andy Weir's novel of the same name.
The new space adventure "Project Hail Mary" sends Ryan Gosling on a long-shot mission to save humanity. His journey takes him millions of miles away from Earth, where his only contact is with an eyeless alien who doesn't speak English. A piece of Philly pop culture helps the unlikely friends overcome their language barrier.
Spoilers for "Project Hail Mary" ahead!
"Project Hail Mary," which hits theaters Friday, is an adaptation of the Andy Weir book of the same name. (Hollywood spun his earlier work "The Martian" into a 2015 blockbuster.) In both versions of the story, junior high science teacher Ryland Grace (Gosling) wakes up aboard a spaceship with no memory of how he wound up there. Slowly, through flashbacks, he remembers: He is supposed to travel to Tau Ceti, the only star in the universe that has not been infected by a scourge called astrophage. It has been slowly dimming the Sun and will cause a devastating ice age on Earth in 30 years. The world's most brilliant minds have come up with one last "Hail Mary" play to stop it. They're sending a scientist to study the only star resistant to astrophage and, hopefully, reverse engineer a repellant.
While he's figuring all this out, Ryland bumps into an Eridian, a spider-like creature from the Eridanus constellation.
This alien is pursuing the same goal as Ryland, so the two team up to restore order to the universe. But they have to learn how to communicate first. After mimicking basic words back to one another, the two eventually establish a vocabulary with the help of laptops and waveform analysis software. Ryland has to give his extraterrestrial buddy a name that makes sense to him, so he lands on Rocky.
That's not because the alien has been wearing a red sweatband this whole time; it's due to his granite-like shell. But Ryland draws Rocky Balboa into the story when they start discussing their love lives. It turns out Rocky has an alien mate back home, with an alien name Ryland can't understand. So he dubs her Adrian.
Adrian is also the name they lend to the planet they discover near Tau Ceti. It contains the only known predator of astrophage, aka the solution to everyone's problems.
The big-screen "Project Hail Mary" adds an extra nod to Philadelphia's famed fake boxer. As part of his crash course on humanity, Ryland shows Rocky a bit of the real film franchise.
"We were making this film with MGM," Gosling recalled on the Kelce brothers' "New Heights" podcast. "And I was like, wait, you guys have all the rights to all the Rockys, right? And the Creeds? And they were like, yeah of course. And I was like, well I have to show him all of them."
The TL;DR here is that Adrian Balboa essentially saves the universe in "Project Hail Mary." Hopefully, NASA has Talia Shire on speed dial. Just in case.
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