Project Hail Mary's Directors Cut 30 Minutes Of Footage For A Smart Reason

A great movie can be made or broken in the editing room. The endless combinations of possibilities can be daunting. That's part of what makes "Project Hail Mary" and its resounding success so impressive. As one of the best sci-fi movies of 2026, it stands as a testament to what directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller can accomplish. In this case, a big part of their brilliance was knowing what to get rid of, just as much as it was about knowing what to keep.

Speaking with former "SNL" star Maya Rudolph for Interview Magazine, Lord and Miller discussed the making of "Project Hail Mary," which dominated the box office and stands as one of the biggest hits of the year overall. Without getting into major spoilers, the early part of the movie centers on Ryan Gosling's Ryland Grace, a teacher who discovers he's in space very, very far away from Earth with no memory of how he got there. He's also tasked with a mission to save humanity from extinction.

The early part of the movie, where Ryland is reckoning with his situation, was originally much longer. "We condensed it to the length of one Kris Kristofferson song," Lord said. "There's about half an hour's worth of material of him flipping out, being drunk, being unable to deal with anything." Miller added, "We shot so much of him just falling apart." So, why bother to shoot all of that, only to remove it later? As Lord explained:

"[The audience] had a hard time with it. You can be sad for two minutes in a movie, but then you've got to get a move on. You're not the first person to say it felt like a throwback. Are movies too mean now?"

The first cut of "Project Hail Mary" was nearly four hours long and received some brutal feedback. Granted, every big studio movie goes through the act of editing down a rough cut until the final product reveals itself, but author Andy Weir's novel (and Drew Goddard's subsequent screenplay) offered a wealth of material, and the directors also shot quite a bit of footage that added to what was already on the page. That made for a difficult process when it came to refining the edit.

"John Wick: Chapter 4" was also originally four hours long, and director Chad Stahelski had to go through a painstaking process of making relatively minor cuts until it was done. In this case, Phil Lord and Chris Miller had larger chunks of footage they were able to leave on the cutting room floor. The final runtime of "Project Hail Mary" is 2 hours and 36 minutes, which is by no means short. But it's a heck of a lot shorter than it could have been. In this case, longer wasn't better.

In that same interview, Miller elaborated on what they wanted to explore with their movie. In the end, they wanted it to be relatable, but there was no need to soak in Grace's misery for more than a couple of minutes to accomplish that:

"We really wanted to explore his vulnerability, fear, and frailty. He's a great microbiologist, but not a guy who's an expert at everything, not an 'I'll go into that burning building to save the kittens' guy. We wanted him to wake up terrified and have to overcome his fears and actually grow into a brave, heroic person. That's why you can relate to him."

"Project Hail Mary" is streaming now on MGM+.