Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary” Has One of the Best Second Weekends in Modern Box Office History
Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary just had a stellar second weekend at the box office, officially passing Creed III as the studio’s most successful film at the box office. The Ryan Gosling-led film, which features Gosling in space forming a world-saving bond with an alien he names Rocky, has now soared past the $300 million mark to become the top-grossing film of 2026 to date.
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and adapted from Andy Weir’s novel by screenwriter Drew Goddard (who was nominated for an Academy Award for adapting Weir’s The Martian for Ridley Scott), Project Hail Mary had one of the best second weekend holds in recent film history, besting massive, Oscar-winning films like Oppenheimer and Dune: Part 2. Project Hail Mary dropped just 32 percent in its second weekend, better than Oppenheimer‘s impressive 43 percent drop in 2023 and Dune: Part 2‘s 44 percent dip in 2024.
Project Hail Mary was fueled by strong reviews and excellent word of mouth.
“In the most purely pleasurable movie so far this year, Ryan Gosling has a blast as a science guy who rockets into space to save all our asses with jolts, jokes, and smarts that won’t quit,” wrote critic Peter Travers.
“For all its bells and whistles, Project Hail Mary is also a lovely, bittersweet character study, a pas de deux between man and alien that elicits a surprising amount of emotions by the time the credits roll,” writes Odie Henderson of the Boston Globe.
“I do this job because in my heart I believe that movies are the culmination of every art form developed by humans, the greatest storytelling mechanism ever developed. Project Hail Mary makes use of every part of that storytelling capacity,” writes critic Nell Minow.
“At once zippy and emotionally wrenching, the film performs a similar balancing act as its leading man,” says The Reveal‘s Keith Phipps.
The film is now sitting at a 10-day domestic haul of $164.3 million, with another $136.2 million overseas, for a global total of $300.8 million. Its domestic launch of $80.6 million in its opening weekend was the second-best in a decade for a non-sequel, non-franchise title, just behind Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which netted $82.5 million.
The film’s charms are aplenty, including Gosling starring as a nerdy, witty biologist whose career is not exactly rocketing when he’s tapped by the head of an international consortium, Eva Stratt (the great Sandra Hüller) to go on a dangerous mission to stop the sun from mysteriously dimming. This mission, which Gosling’s character, teacher Ryland Grace, accepts, comes as quite a surprise to him when he wakes up aboard a spaceship, having forgotten it all, alone with a dead crew. Only he learns he’s not all alone—hurtling through space beside him, on its own mission, is an alien attempting the same feat, and Ryland and Rocky, as he’s freshly dubbed, will need to work together to make the impossible possible. It’s a feel-good movie made with fine performers and an ace crew, all of which has been rocket fuel at the box office.
There’s now talk of a potential sequel, but it would require Weir to write a follow-up book (the author says he’s got some ideas).
Featured image: Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo credit: Jonathan Olley. © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.
