Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have adapted Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, but there was one huge mistake with spoilers. Warning ! This feature contains spoilers for the plot of Project Hail Mary. Before we go any further, I want to point out that I adored Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary. As ... Project Hail Mary spoilers | Can we have a chat about how much the marketing gave away?
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have adapted Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, but there was one huge mistake with spoilers.
Warning ! This feature contains spoilers for the plot of Project Hail Mary.
Before we go any further, I want to point out that I adored Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary. As a fan of Andy Weir’s 2021 book of the same name, I found it still to be just as exciting as the first time I read the book, the 156-minute runtime flew by and Ryan Gosling made for an excellent Dr. Ryland Grace. Simon Brew explains why the film is great in his review.
I loved the film, but I did not love the marketing campaign. More specifically, the trailers.
The first trailer premiered in June 2025, a full nine months before the film would hit cinemas, and introduced the world to Gosling’s Dr. Grace, who wakes up in space alone and lacking the skills one needs to survive in space. He quickly recalls that he’s there to save the world as the Sun is dying, but as you might expect, it’s a bit of a challenge that he’s facing.
That alone is an intriguing premise and not too far away – on the surface – from Danny Boyle’s Sunshine. The people behind the film would be enough to convince people to buy tickets, too. Lord and Miller are known as excellent filmmakers but the pair haven’t directed anything since 2014’s 22 Jump Street. Their version of Solo: A Star Wars Story fell through in 2017 so Project Hail Mary might finally give us an idea of what that film could have looked like with them in charge. Plus, Gosling still has more star power than he knows what to do with, so surely Project Hail Mary would have pulled in a lot of viewers just on these alone.
Which begs the question: wwhy on Earth would they ruin in the very first trailer that Grace is joined by a very friendly alien on his mission?
It’s one hell of a choice to make. What happened to just hinting things and surprising audiences? Or at least building suspense when it comes to what Grace encounters up in space rather than have the suspense spelled out to you before you’ve even got to the cinema car park?
In all fairness, the first trailer doesn’t show the entirety of Rocky, the spider-like alien who is also on a mission to save its home planet from whatever is eating the stars in the universe. That honour goes to the second trailer, which premiered in November 2025, still four months before the film would premiere in cinemas. The third trailer, however, abandoned sense of secrecy and even spoils Grace nearly dying and Rocky saving him.
Take a look, but I recommend only doing so if you’ve read the book or watched the film.
Imagine if the Project Hail Mary trailers simply implied, hinted at something being there but refusing to tell you if it was friend or foe. You’d have to hold on until the film started, probably even made it to its second act to find out that Rocky wants to team up to save the worlds, and that he has a pretty tragic backstory, too.
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The novel’s writer Andy Weir has defended the choice to include Rocky in the trailers. “It’s really more a marketing decision by Amazon MGM, but the idea was no one’s going to walk into that theater and not know about Rocky,” Weir told Polygon, adding that it’s not “a Darth Vader is Luke’s father kind of situation”.
“All trailers are designed to put butts in seats, and we want those butts in those seats,” Weir continued. “We want people to go now I want to know what’s going on.”
A counter-argument: wouldn’t that have been the case even without Rocky in the trailers quite that much?
The Project Hail Mary trailers were in by no means the first to spoil a movie. One of the trailers for 2000’s Castaway ruined the fate of Tom Hanks’ Chuck. Kingsman: The Golden Circle's promo ruined the return of Colin Firth. Denis Villeneuve originally wanted Deckard’s return to be a surprise but the studio insisted on Harrison Ford’s inclusion in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers as early as possible. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Martha trailers also revealed Wonder Woman’s inclusion but in the film itself it’s clearly supposed to play out like a surprise.
The worst thing about all this? It feels completely normal to see everything in trailers months before sitting down in a cinema to watch the film.
Are there any surprises left then, for fans of the book or newcomers? Well yes, thankfully. The ending, which we won’t spoil in detail here, will surely still come as a surprise to those not familiar with the book. In fact, Goddard fought to keep it.
“Whenever you’re doing anything that feels bold or different,” Goddard told Indiewire. “I’ve learned, people are going to push back against it. There’s a human quality in what we do that you feel comforted if it’s been done already. So anytime something’s different, and you take a chance on something, there’s an initial reaction to say, ‘No, no, no, no, don’t do this, it feels weird. This is too new. I don’t understand this.’”
For fans of the books, the film’s tone might also come as a bit of a surprise, even if the plot is all familiar stuff. Rocky comes across as a puppy dog begging for belly rubs rather than a far more intelligent creature than Gosling’s Grace.
Furthermore, the trailers sold us a buddy comedy with a side of science fiction, reducing the amount of science from the book, but ruined something that could have been mind-blowing to find out in the cinema. Even the book’s back cover only hints that Grace isn’t in space alone rather than spells it all out.
Thankfully, not everything has been spoiled by the trailers. There’s still one or two moments of note, and a bit of a sing-song, but Project Hail Mary is just the latest film to have multiple trailers that reveal far too much and we’ve gotten too used to it. The frustration here is the feeling that the film might just have enjoyed as high impact a marketing campaign without giving at least part of the game away…
Project Hail Mary is in cinemas now.
