Phil Lord and Chris Miller on Project Hail Mary: “We wanted the movie to feel like you were in the guts of a machine”

Phil Lord and Chris Miller have made a career out of turning inauspicious ideas into unexpected successes. Starting their directorial career with bizarrely titled animation Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 2009, the pair made two riotously funny spin-offs of a half-forgotten 1980s cop show with 21 Jump Street (2012) and its sequel 22 Jump Street (2014), and hit unlikely gold in The Lego Movie (2014).

Some 12 years and a slew of high-profile writing and producing gigs later, they return with Project Hail Mary, a high-concept sci-fi about an solo astronaut (Ryan Gosling) who is enlisted as part of a NASA team on the Hail Mary, a rocket flying to the outer reaches of the galaxy to find a solution to the dimming of the sun. He ends up contemplating the vast emptiness of space alone until a mysterious ship parks alongside him and he begins contacting its sentient rock-shaped passenger. 

Based on a novel by Andy Weir and scripted by Drew Goddard – an authorial combination that previously brought us Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) – this spectacular blockbuster proves as warm and inventive as Lord and Miller’s previous directing work, or indeed the two animated Spider-Verse films they’ve written and produced. On that front, Lord says progress on the third film, Spiderman: Beyond the Spider-Verse is “going great”, and they start work again the day after Project Hail Mary is released. He explains: “The minute we finish releasing this film, that’s where we’re headed.”  

In person, the pair are cheery, enthusiastic interviewees who finish each other’s sentences like an old married couple. They even seem to bear Lucasfilm no ill will, despite being fired due to “creative differences” three-quarters of the way through principal photography on Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). Asked if they would ever return to the Star Wars universe, Lord offers “Careers are long, I suppose,” while Miller tempts us further: “Never say never.” 

Lou Thomas: How much did Drew Goddard add or remove from Andy Weir’s novel and to what extent did you agree with what he had done?  

Phil Lord: Drew goes off, does all of these calculations in his head and comes back. He delivered this outline, early in the process, that really broke the back of the novel. We shouldn’t say it like that. 

Chris Miller: It solved the conundrum. 

Lord: The riddle. It brought out the essence of the novel, but he found a way to structure the movie that honoured what Andy Weir had done with his novel and felt like he crystalised it, so we knew we had the movie. Then it was a matter of convincing Drew to write it. 

Miller: It’s a 16-hour audio book, and fitting that into a movie means that some plot mechanics have to go. But keeping the spirit in the soul of those relationships was the real key. 

Lord: He kept the flashback structure, kept all of the surprises, kept the ending. All the stuff that made it unique remain.   

Ryan spends a lot of time alone on screen. I was reminded of Bob Hoskins’ performance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). At what point in the film’s production did you think you had the right guy?  

Miller: Ryan was the first one in on this movie. We knew from before we even started shooting, because he was very involved throughout the process, very thoughtful about the character, and wanted to get into the weeds of what made him tick. He came with a bunch of ideas, and for us that’s the best type of partner.  

Lord: You can also tell from his other performances. He’s a very playful actor, so when he has a scene partner, it fuels that sense of play. We felt our job was to always give him a scene partner, whether it was a robot nurse, the ship’s computer or the puppeteers puppeting Rocky on set. We always wanted him to have a playmate. Even when he was on his own, we would be in his ear offering suggestions so that he always had a castmate.  

How would you fare if you got stuck in space with no one to talk to?  

Lord: I’ve always felt if I was on the street for one night I would immediately begin speaking in tongues and babbling, so I don’t know about my sanity. Chris, you would probably be all right? You were an Eagle Scout for a while. 

Miller: I think that the mental anguish would probably settle me down pretty quick.  

Lord: The premise of the movie is that any of us, after a little bit of time freaking out, are capable of… 

Miller Rising to the challenge?  

Lord: Yes. Ryan was insistent on not being good at space. He was, like, “I already made a movie where I was Neil Armstrong [First Man, 2018]. I’d like to make a movie where I’m a regular person flipping out and feeling clumsy up there.” His character feels at home doing science on his own. He feels not at home in zero gravity, not at home with a roommate. The idea was for the film to challenge this character and force him to grow. What we’re trying to say is that the audience come away thinking, “I am capable of something, with a lot of help.” 

There’s a strong precedent for solo-traveller space films: Gravity (2013), The Martian, Interstellar (2014). Did any of those films influence your thinking while you were making this?  

Miller: Oftentimes, we’re trying to figure out how our film can feel original and unique and unlike stuff that’s come before it. “I feel like I’ve seen that before” – that’s the worst thing that you can say about something.  

Lord: We really admire those films, but we felt we had to stake out a lane that was different. One thing about this story that’s unique is that a lot of films are about someone who feels at home on Earth, wakes up in space and they feel lonely. This is a movie about someone who feels lonely on Earth, they go to space and find a friend. We wanted space to be, in a funny way, inviting. The old vacuum of space is actually warm and inviting. You’re closer to heaven. The way the film is textured visually, we wanted it to feel more homey.  

In a similar vein, there’s obviously been friendly alien films such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial [1982] and WALL-E [2008].  

Miller: What works structurally in a movie is something that we think about, but again, we’re always trying to find our own lane.  

Lord: What happens when you meet a stranger or you make a friend? We thought a lot about those movies. One of them that’s really close to our heart, that might not seem obvious, is Harold and Maude [1971]. You watch someone who feels alienated. Harold meets someone who’s more grown up, brings out the best in them, and makes them flourish. That’s what Maude does to Harold. It is a little bit what Rocky does to Grace.  

How did you describe what you wanted to achieve visually to the wider team of people who worked on this film?  

Miller: With really early discussions with our cinematographer Greig Fraser, it started with wanting to have two different aspect ratios: a big, tall, IMAX-sized screen for space. Any time we were remembering a flashback, we wanted to go widescreen and make it more like a sliver of a memory.  

Lord: The film grain is different between the two aspect ratios. The things remembered from Earth are more idealised and the grain is tighter. In space, it’s more immediate. The grain is bigger and more palpable.  

Miller: We also did exploration on a virtual spaceship set to make sure that we had the right dimensions for the spaceship, with Greig lensing it. We started to really gravitate towards this naturalistic, handheld, captured feeling, because it made it feel more real. We had this puppet that could actually react to the performance that was happening.  

Lord: We didn’t want the movie to feel staid, antiseptic, slick or shiny. We wanted it to feel messy. One of the things when we talk to astronauts and researched the ISS – it’s messy. There’s wires everywhere. It’s a machine with the guts on the outside. It’s not a Mac, it’s a PC. We wanted the whole movie to feel like you were in the guts of a machine and also in the guts of a person. Ryan’s character, his machinery is on the outside, visible to us.  

Lord: We wanted to put garbage everywhere. We were trying to find ways to be tactile and warm. One of the things Greig brought up was Ridley Scott’s Alien [1979], where the walls are… 

Miller: Dirty. 

Lord: And cream coloured and quilted. We wanted the ship to feel like a quilt of many different nations, each of them building a different room. The walls where Ryan wakes up are quilted. There’s a sense of envelopment.  

Your previous directorial features have been successes, but when you look at them on paper: a remake of an ‘80s cop thing [21 Jump Street], The Lego Movie?   

Lord: None of them seem like good ideas at the time. 

Right. They seem a bit questionable. This…  

Miller: Seemed like a good idea from the start! 

Lord: Yeah, it did seem unfamiliar territory for us.  

How do you guys decide what you want to make generally?  

Miller: In this particular case, we read the manuscript for the book and it was great. It was emotional, exciting, it had twists and turns. It had core relationships that we found really fascinating.  

Lord: It was about buddies who worked hard together to do something.  

Miller: We love stories about people who become friends. But also, it seems really hard. The second lead of this movie is an alien rock with no face. And you have to fall in love with it, too. By the end, you have to think, “I would die for that rock.” And if you don’t, it doesn’t work. That challenge is what really excites us. 

Lord: The common thread is we like projects that seem impossible to pull off.  

Miller: Well, that seem harder, but we think we know the way to do it.  

Lord: We also ask ourselves, could someone else make this film better? Most times the answer is yes. In this case, we felt we’re gonna do a version of this that’s gonna be my favourite version.  

You’ve made some great family-friendly stuff, and you’ve made stuff that’s more adult, with Jump Street.  

Lord: Yes. No child should see that film.  

This is somewhere in the middle. Is there a sweet spot in terms of the audience you make films for?  

Miller: We make films for ourselves. When we’re working, I think, “Is this gonna make Phil laugh? Does this seem engaging to me personally?” And it just so happens that our sensibilities are not [that different]. 

Lord: I always think, “Is this gonna make my dad laugh?” I used to make him laugh at the kitchen table. We don’t necessarily think about how to target a demographic. The demographic we’re targeting is a human being. We’re just trying to appeal to the things that feel viscerally appealing. We’ve seen this movie play all around the world 25 times, and the laughs are always in the same place. It doesn’t matter where you show it. 

Project Hail Mary is in cinemas including BFI IMAX from 20 March, with previews screenings on 14, 15 and 19 March.