Project Hail Mary writer calls Ryan Gosling’s casting “a dream”.
Screenwriter Drew Goddard felt confident writing the script because he knew Ryan could handle whatever he wrote and that they were “in good hands with our leadership.”
He told it The Hollywood Reporter: “It was a dream. Ryan Gosling was already attached when they came to me. Any fear I had about how we were going to get this done was immediately taken away by knowing that Ryan was doing this with us. He can do anything. Whatever I write, he’s going to be able to get it done. That set the tone of knowing this was going to be very difficult, but also knowing we were in good hands with our leadership.”
Project Hail Mary revolves around the storyline of a 2012 sci-fi novel by Andy Weir, which tells the story of a schoolteacher and former biologist Ryland Grace (Gosling), who wakes up aboard a spacecraft suffering from amnesia.
While film budgets are being cut across the board, Goddard emphasized that Project Hail Mary needed its mega-budget and he hopes its success will provide hope for new projects across the board.
He said, “A lot of my budget concerns come with the decision to do the project. Before I start writing, I want to make sure that what I think it’s going to cost matches what we think it’s going to cost. I’ve learned from experience, if they’re comfortable, they’re going to let me be crazier. So something like Cabin in the Woods was so crazy. I knew we had to make that cheap. So I write that to be affordable, because then they end up letting me go bananas.”
“With this one, there was no cheap version of this movie. We’re not making this unless we grow up and swing for the fences. But it did feel like the kind of movie you could do that with. It felt like the kind of movie you’re going to take your kids to, you’re going to take your grandparents to. That’s what you look for to justify the budgets. And when I write it, I try to be thoughtful. But I never try to undermine the boundaries. I have a great imagination. Chris and Phil have an even greater one. imagination. Once we make the decision to say yes, we stop thinking about the budget.
“I don’t want to sound completely optimistic. It’s sad what’s happening, but we’re going to go down swinging. And we’re definitely going to go down swinging with this movie,” Drew Goddard concluded.
