Patrick Cavanaugh is an Editor at MovieWeb and has been writing about movies and TV for 15 years. He's covered everything from superheroes to Star Wars, as well as events like San Diego Comic-Con, Star Wars Celebration, the Sundance Film Festival, South by Southwest, and more. One time, Michael Shannon said to Patrick, "You're funny."

There are a lot of iconic movie-making partnerships, such as Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Christopher Nolan and Michael Caine, or John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. While these filmmakers have collaborated with several actors and these actors have worked with several filmmakers, there's just something special about these partnerships that feels especially fulfilling. Back in 2015, a sci-fi partnership emerged that, while not the most frequent of collaborators, has yielded impressive results.

Andy Weir's novel The Martian was a success enough in its own right that it resulted in writer Drew Goddard adapting the story into a screenplay. Proving how impressive that script was, Ridley Scott boarded the project to direct, with the movie ultimately starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jeff Daniels. The Martian would go on to take in $630.6 million worldwide and score multiple Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Another partnership between Weir and Goddard has yielded similar results, making for one of 2026's biggest sci-fi movies.

A decade after releasing The Martian, Weir released his 2021 novel Project Hail Mary. While the premises of the two stories were drastically different, one thing they had in common was that they both featured characters in relative isolation attempting to use their scientific knowledge to pull off a challenging mission. Starring Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary took in $684.3 million worldwide, and it has 95% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. After landing on Digital and on Prime Video, the movie is now landing on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on Aug. 11.

Special Features on the new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release include:

• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• DOLBY ATMOS /AUDIO TRACK
• Audio Commentary by Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
• Earth's Favorite Eridian featurette
• Five Deleted Scenes
• Optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles for the main feature

If these features don't quite scratch your itch to dive deeper into the movie, we'll also be getting a limited Collector's Edition release later this year on Oct. 13. While the full details on the Collector's Edition release have yet to be confirmed, you can see below from the packaging alone that it will be a sought-after item for physical media enthusiasts.

Project Hail Mary 4K Blu-ray SteelbookAlliance Entertainment

Upon release, Project Hail Mary broke a number of records. Back in March, it set the bar for the highest opening weekend at the box office, though those numbers have since been surpassed. Its $684.3 million total has made it the highest-grossing movie released by Amazon MGM Studios, and it had the best March opening of a non-franchise movie in history.

While it's currently unknown what could be next for Weir and Goddard, hopefully we don't have to wait another decade for them to team up for an ambitious sci-fi offering.

Project Hail Mary

4 /5

Release Date March 15, 2026

Runtime 157 minutes

Director Christopher Miller, Phil Lord

Writers Drew Goddard, Andy Weir

Producers Aditya Sood, Amy Pascal, Andy Weir, Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, Rachel O'Connor, Ryan Gosling

Cast

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  James Ortiz

  Rocky (voice)

Based on the novel by Andy Weir (The Martian), Project Hail Mary is an action-adventure sci-fi film that stars Ryan Gosling as an astronaut who must save Earth from an oncoming ice age by heading to a faraway galaxy.