Project Hail Mary Writer Andy Weir Has Already Abandoned One Book Idea

Andy Weir's stories have given us two of the best sci-fi movies of the last decade in 2015's "The Martian" and 2026's "Project Hail Mary." Both were based on Weir's novels of the same names, and both were big successes — especially "Project Hail Mary," which dominated the box office. But surely what everybody wants is an adaptation of Weir's never-realized concept for a story about a man with a lucky cat.

The author spoke about the unwritten story in a 2021 interview with Goodreads. Asked what ideas he has for future books, the author said he has an "ideas file" which he adds to whenever he thinks of something new. "But that doesn't mean that they're good ideas," he said. "The trick is, when I'm deciding on a new project, to determine which of these ideas are awesome and which of them are just stupid." One which he decided fell into the latter category concerned a character with a lucky cat. "One of my ideas is a story where the main character appears to be a guy who is very lucky — all the time," he explained. "But it turns out that he's not lucky; it's his cat that's lucky. It's all about the fact that his cat is really lucky, and because his cat likes him, then he is lucky. I would title that 'Felicitous Feline' or 'Fortunate Feline.'" 

Not exactly the kind of hard sci-fi we're used to from Weir, then. But this is a man who has written everything from short stories to graphic novels and web comics. Surely there's room somewhere in the Weir canon for the cat story? Alas, the writer doesn't seem to be too keen on it, telling Goodreads, "That was in my ideas file. And we're not going to do that."

Though he's penned various stories across genres, Andy Weir is best known for his sci-fi novels. In 2011, he published "The Martian," and four years later, Matt Damon led the movie adaptation. Weir loved "The Martian" and praised Damon's portrayal of the lead character, Mark Watney, as being exactly what he'd imagined when he wrote the book. Six years later, Weir released "Project Hail Mary," and Hollywood once again worked its magic, delivering a hugely successful adaptation led by Ryan Gosling that was basically a live-action Pixar movie in space.

Sandwiched between "The Martian" and "Project Hail Mary" was Weir's book that was intended to launch an entire franchise. 2017's "Artemis" wasn't received quite as well as "The Martian" and has yet to be adapted for the big screen, though a movie has been in development hell for some time. For now, Weir is reportedly working on a new novel involving artificial intelligence, but what we really need is his lucky cat story.

Unfortunately, it seems we'll likely never see "Felicitous Feline" come to fruition. Weir, who once took part in a Reddit Q&A using a photo of himself with his own cat as proof of his identity, brought up his unrealized cat story during a 2023 discussion for TED. "I come up with like a hundred ideas a day," he said. "And usually, a hundred of 'em suck." He then used the cat story as an example, explaining that he planned to hold the cat reveal until the very end. "The big twist at the end is it's actually the cat that's lucky, not him," he said. "So just so you understand, some of the ideas that I don't develop."

As silly as it sounds to write a book about a lucky guy wherein the big twist is that it's actually his cat who's lucky, there might be something to Andy Weir's discarded idea. The author has infused all his sci-fi novels with a sense of humor, which has helped set his hard sci-fi stories apart from others. Ryland Grace's narration in "Project Hail Mary" is charmingly irreverent, and Weir clearly knows how to play moments for laughs, even as the fate of planet Earth hangs in the balance.

That's not to say his idea for "Fortunate Feline" is a winner, but it does raise the question of what a more grounded comedy/fantasy movie penned by Weir might look like. I'm talking about a "Yes Man"-style comedy that plays to Weir's strengths as a comedic writer. It might be interesting to see what he could do when the humor isn't there solely to make the more opaque hard science passages more tolerable. Whether such a movie is based on the lucky cat idea or not, it will be interesting to see whether Weir does break away from sci-fi in the future and whether that leads to different kinds of movies based on the author's work.

Not that the author needs to break away from anything. "Project Hail Mary" is one of the best movies of 2026 and represents the perfect next chapter in cinema's greatest modern-day sci-fi trend, namely the trend towards optimism and hope rather than the bleak dystopianism of the 2010s. It seems unlikely Weir would veer away from a winning formula — though you can't get more upbeat and hopeful than a lucky cat.