“Project Hail Mary” made a stunning $80 million on its opening weekend.
This means a lot on so many levels.
Star Ryan Gosling’s previous foray into space, Damien Chazelle’s “First Man,” did not live up to expectations. That was eight years ago.
Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller should be equally thrilled. They were yanked off 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” and replaced with Ron Howard. The pair have produced a lot of projects since then but this is the first film they’ve directed since then.
MGM is ecstatic since this is the first movie of theirs to score much outside of James Bond.
Amazon, famous for shipping toasters, is just getting over the PR debacle of “Melania.” They squandered $75 mil on that baby.
More records: this is the biggest box office for a non-franchise, non-sequel original idea released in the month of March in an even numbered year.
Of course, “Project Hail Mary” is not a sequel but rather a cousin of “The Martian.” Both titles came from sci fi books written by Andy Weir and are similar in tone.
The other good news is that “PHM” is a really well made movie, lot of fun if not a bit too long. A lot of people may see it again just to understand a few of the elusive plot points.
As for that $80 mil: let’s hope it’s just the beginning. Amazon/MGM has spent gazillions on promotion and marketing. The $250 million budget means they’ll need $500 million to break even. Then “PHM” will come to Amazon Prime.
