Project Hail Mary's Drew Goddard Wrote That Movie to be Expensive
Drew Goddard attends the 'Project Hail Mary' world premiere in London.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
-
Share on Facebook
-
Share on X
-
Google Preferred
-
Share to Flipboard
-
Show additional share options
-
Share on LinkedIn
-
Share on Pinterest
-
Share on Reddit
-
Share on Tumblr
-
Share on Whats App
-
Send an Email
-
Print the Article
-
Post a Comment
Where many find success in determining their lane and staying inside of it, Drew Goddard has cobbled together one of the more interesting Hollywood careers by doing the opposite. The screenwriter has spent the last two decades defying predictability by bouncing between media and genres, with one major exception: he’s a sucker for Andy Weir adaptations.
Goddard first penned the script to Ridley Scott’s 2015 adaptation of the author’s The Martian, a screenplay that scored him an Oscar nomination. A decade later, he’s back with Weir’s Project Hail Mary. The Ryan Gosling vehicle, directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, arrives in theaters Friday. And, like The Martian before it, the film is essentially about one guy alone in space talking to himself.
Project Hail Mary came with a lofty price tag, with a reported budget of $248 million ($200 million after tax credits, per Puck), and Goddard suggests that the money is on screen in a way that will hopefully lure people to the cinema. “I don’t want to sound fully optimistic,” says Goddard. “It is sad what’s happening with theaters, but we’re going to go down swinging. And we’re definitely going down swinging with this movie.”
Related Stories
Movies
Why 1983's Apocalypse Film 'Testament' Feels Timelier Than Ever: "The Terror Now Is That We Will Attack"
Lifestyle
'Project Hail Mary' Book Returns to Top of Charts on Heels of Ryan Gosling Film Premiere
Speaking during a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), Goddard discussed the six-year path to getting Project Hail Mary on screen, his strategy for keeping top-rated broadcast series High Potential on the air for a good seven years and lessons learned from a career working in some of TV’s most celebrated writers rooms. (“Everyone who worked on Lost still has a level of PTSD.”)
This is not to ignore the variety in your body of work, but there’s a through line to The Martian and Project Hail Mary. What does it say about you that you excel at writing characters essentially just talking to themselves for two hours?
Other than The Martian and Hail Mary, it’s something I try to avoid. A lot of writers either write from inside out or from outside in. I probably would classify myself as more an outside in, except I love Andy’s work. When I look at what Andy does so well, it’s scary. So much, especially with Hail Mary, is in the narrator’s head — which is not always the stuff of great screenplays. It was terrifying to read the book and think, OK, how in God’s name am I gonna make this work? But that’s also part of what makes it fun.
You could also write it as well as anyone could, but if you don’t have the right actor, it’s impossible to execute a movie like this successfully. Not many actors can hold an audience’s attention for such long stretches of time.
Without question. And in this case, it was a dream. Ryan Gosling was already attached when they came to me. Any fear I had about how we were going to pull this off was instantly allayed by the knowledge that Ryan was doing this with us. He can do anything. Whatever I write, he’s going to be able to pull off. That set a tone of knowing this was going to be really difficult but also knowing we were in good hands with our lead.
When you were writing this screenplay, were you aware of how much money was going to be spent? And how does that awareness impact the choices that you make? There are probably a hundred different ways to write this movie, depending on the budget.
A lot of my worry about the budget goes into the decision to do the project. Before I start writing, I want to make sure that what I think it’s going to cost lines up with what we think it’s going to take. I’ve learned from experience, if they feel comfortable, they’re going to let me be crazier. So, something like Cabin in the Woods was so crazy. I knew we needed to make that for cheap. So I write that to be affordable, because then they’ll let me go bananas in the end. With this one, there was no cheap version of this movie. We’re not making this unless we’re big and swinging for the fences. But it did feel like the type of movie you could do that. It felt like the type of movie that you’re gonna bring your kids to, you’re gonna bring your grandparents to. That’s what you’re looking for to justi