Project Hail Mary smashes box office predictions with bold approach

This article appeared as part of the Daily Sensemaker newsletter – one story a day to make sense of the world. To receive it in your inbox, featuring content exclusive to the newsletter, sign up for free here.

Project Hail Mary earned $140m at cinemas this weekend, making it the biggest opening of the year so far and one of the biggest ever openings for a non-franchise film. The miracle of the sci-fi flick is twofold. First is its dedication to science. Andy Weir, who wrote its source text, solved rocket fuel equations to present a realistic account of the main plot point: a journey into deep space to save the Earth. Second is the film’s rejection of green screen, which has become a fixture of most modern sci-fi movies (with the notable exception of Interstellar). The spacecraft on which most of the action occurs was built as a set, while the alien was brought to life by a set of puppeteers. There is some CGI but Project Hail Mary, by and large, is a throwback to how films used to be made.