They’re Already Talking About Project Hail Mary 2

It’s the more the Mary-er as the success of Project Hail Mary prompts immediate sequel talk.

I had a hunch that Project Hail Mary was gonna be a big hit. No, I didn’t “call it”; it just struck me that all the ingredients were there to produce something that had a decent chance of really striking a chord with a wide audience. The last Andy Weir adaptation, Ridley Scott‘s The Martian in 2015, was fantastic. Phil Lord and Andy Miller proved they have the touch with the Spider-Verse films. Everyone loves Ryan Gosling. Tick, tick, tick.

Well, as it turns out, Project Hail Mary has been a huge success at the box office, earning $80.5 million in North America over its opening weekend, which is the second-best result in a decade for a non-sequel, non-franchise film – Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer retains the top spot with $82.5 million.

The irony in such a win is that it makes studio Amazon MGM very much want to turn it into a sequel and a franchise, because that’s where the money allegedly is. According to The Hollywood Reporter, while there have been “no official conversations” with original author Andy Weir about a follow up, “a sequel isn’t out of the question.”

Citing everyone’s favourite snitch, “close sources”, THR say that Weir is the key element in determining if another Project Hail Mary will eventuate, with the main hurdles being a) he never wrote a sequel to the 2021 novel, in fact b) he’s never written a sequel to any of his stuff, and c) he’s working on another book at the minute.

It’s worth noting that neither Weir nor Amazon MGM responded to THR‘s requests for comment, so a fairly hefty pinch of salt is probably in order. But there’s still a decent chance that Goz will he heading back into space sooner rather than later.