Why Ryan Gosling’s Movie Ignited Strong Debate

The popularity for Project Hail Mary continues to soar since its massive opening weekend at the box office, which has given oxygen to plenty of social media discourse.

Ryan Gosling stars in directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller‘s sci-fi epic that surpassed $80 million domestically in its debut frame to represent Amazon MGM Studios‘ top opening weekend. With a script from Drew Goddard that adapts author Andy Weir‘s 2021 novel, Project Hail Mary centers on science teacher Ryland Grace (Gosling) teaming with alien pal Rocky in a desperate effort to prevent the sun’s destruction.

With the movie’s release came a flurry of social media posts, as audiences debated everything one could possibly imagine to be a potential topic for debate. This included messages about the film’s quality, the book’s quality, the frequency and success of the jokes, its perceived political perspective, its positioning of the U.S. amid the global ecosystem, Gosling’s project choices and the directors’ track records, to name a smattering.

“Anything that incites debate — especially if you have people who are evangelical about the property and certain talent or creators — is going to drive the algorithm,” Jordan Levin, the former CEO of both the WB and AwesomenessTV, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s debate around a number of themes that seem to be political. The whole idea of international cooperation seems to be a political debate. The idea of fact-based science — which is very foundational to the writing of Andy Weir — is very much a debate in this day and age, especially this idea that science can solve our problems.”

Adds Levin, who worked with Lord and Miller and former Buffy the Vampire Slayer writer Goddard during his time at the WB: “Then if you just get into cinephiles, there’s this whole debate about, ‘Is the moviegoing theater experience alive or dead?’ I’ve seen huge online debate about, ‘Is it a sci-fi classic that goes up there with the greats?’ Or other people are saying it’s pandering or the use of humor is a little out of place. There’s debate over production techniques, and there are a lot of people rallying around the fact that there were practical sets and puppetry used as compared to just all CGI.”

Other films over the past 12 months have similarly spurred rabid social media conversation, including A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Superman and Weapons. But the expansive range of discussion topics for an original property that appeals to audiences of all ages has made the Project Hail Mary discourse particularly notable.

For some industry experts, the fact that the film is not part of an existing franchise worked as an asset to open up marketing possibilities in the lead-up to the release. Certainly, the Project Hail Mary team was busy creating unique promotional moments in recent weeks, like viral videos involving Gosling on Jeopardy! or showing off his football-tossing skills.

“It’s great to see,” Russell Schwartz, the former president of theatrical marketing at New Line Cinema, says about the audience engagement. “The nice thing about a non-IP movie is that you’re able to conceptualize from zero: ‘What are the best companies or brands that we should work with?’ It’s a much more imaginative way of selling a movie than having to go with the established IP and knowing you’re going with your usual, run-of-the-mill partners. I think the people at MGM are giddy over that opportunity, and the fact that Ryan was so willing is just great to see.”

Schwartz ran the marketing campaign for The Notebook — the 2004 drama that marked Gosling’s first major hit as a lead — and was able to see how seriously the actor takes movie promotion. Schwartz recalls that New Line founder Bob Shaye did not like the look of a poster for The Notebook that showed a bearded Gosling embracing co-star Rachel McAdams, which led Shaye to ask that they remove the facial hair. “Shaye said, ‘No one will ever go see that movie because the hero’s got a beard on,’ so I took the beard off,” the marketing expert says. “I showed it to Ryan, and he says, ‘I’m never doing publicity for this movie if you don’t put my beard back on.’” Sure enough, the beard came back.

Prominent figures with a reputation for outer space social content are not surprised that Project Hail Mary has dominated online conversation, given the way that the film developed its story, not to mention its unique alien friend. “I talked to Andy a bunch about the movie, and Andy and I have been talking about his next book a little bit,” says Chris Hadfield, retired astronaut and author of the best-selling thriller Final Orbit. “I’m really pleased that they worked hard to make it as visually realistic and compelling as they could. The deft way with which you decide to portray an alien leaves some of it to the imagination but with enough there to really spark your curiosity.”

Splashy marketing campaigns and noisy social media chatter over a project can run the risk of alienating audiences, which may have been a factor in A24’s Marty Supreme and lead Timothée Chalamet getting shut out at this year’s Oscars despite nine nominations. “It’s a little bit different than the way Timothée Chalamet rough-rode over A24, in terms of him running the campaign,” Schwartz says about what he’s heard of the two recent films. “Obviously, Ryan was in terrific sync with the MGM people.”

The continued popularity of Project Hail Mary has also spurred new interest in real-life space exploration, including the impending launch of Artemis II, marking NASA‘s first moon mission in more than 50 years.

“This movie and movies like it are engaging ways for people get familiar with pretty hard concepts,” says space-focused content creator Kobi Brown. “In the movie and the book, we’re talking about hardcore alien molecular biology and exploration of things like how the sun could be destroyed or how interstellar traffic works, time dilation. All of these things are very complex, but this could be people’s first touchpoint for those concepts, and they want to know more.”

Despite the complex nature of the science, one factor that might have helped increase the amount of social posts about Project Hail Mary is that families have been drawn to it, which perhaps was not the initial focus for the campaign.

“I suspect the filmmakers made a movie for the Ryan Gosling sci-fi audience and ended up with a family movie,” Schwartz says. Regardless, the excitement for the film confirms that audiences remain thirsty for something fresh: “When it’s a surprise movie like that, it just does wonders for word of mouth. It’ll just go on and on. This movie’s not going anywhere.”