Several new clips from Project Hail Mary were shown at San Diego Comic-Con – and Ryan Gosling does, indeed, meet an alien.
At the Project Hail Mary panel held at SDCC, the first five minutes of the movie were shown. In those minutes, Gosling wakes up from an induced coma and immediately struggles with the robot trying to help him. He flops around a bunch before trying to climb up to check on the others with him... only to discover that they're all dead. He looks out the window into the unknown and punches the window.
Fans were then treated to three more brief scenes from the film. In the first, Ryland (Gosling) is approached by government officials at the middle school where he teaches because he wrote a paper about lifeforms not based on water. They have one and want him to look at it. We then cut to him in a quarantine room in a suit. He goes through a bunch of tests, jokes about how nothing is working, then has a brief moment of hope before another test falls through.
In another clip, he arrives at Tau Ceti (a single star that is similar to the sun), but his engine immediately cuts off and he's sent into zero gravity. He uses a scope to check out the star, and notices something strange in what he's observing. The computer warns that something is approaching: the alien ship we first saw in the trailer has arrived. Ryland goes out to investigate the ship. In the final clip, Ryland has his first meeting with the alien, which mimes a message through a clear rock door. Gosling takes it as a warning to go back to the ship, so he gives the alien and thumbs up and says goodbye.
The film serves as an adaptation of the Andy Weir novel of the same name, and stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a middle school teacher who just so happens to have a doctorate in molecular biology and becomes the reluctant member of a crew who is tasked with figuring out why the sun is dying.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller direct from a screenplay adapted by Drew Goddard, who also adapted the screenplay for the 2015 Academy Award-nominated sci-fi pic The Martian. Weir, Lord, Miller, Goddard, and Gosling all attended the panel.
Project Hail Mary is set to hit theaters on March 20, 2026. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2025, or, check out our list of movie release dates. For more from Comic-Con, stay tuned to our SDCC 2025 live-blog for the latest updates.
