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\n Photo: Jonathan Olley\/Amazon MGM Studios\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n
This weekend, Project Hail Mary<\/a> escaped multiple gravitational forces at the box office to blast off as the year\u2019s biggest opening. Though non-sequel movies have a harder time putting butts in seats than franchises, and despite distributor Amazon MGM\u2019s fairly crummy box-office track record, the PG-13 Ryan Gosling<\/a> crowdpleaser sold $80.5 million worth of tickets, eclipsing prerelease financial estimates that predicted an opening tally of between $50 million and $65 million. That number comes in well above 2025\u2019s previous record holder, Scream 7<\/a> ($64.1 million), as well as Amazon MGM\u2019s opening-weekend high water mark with Creed III ($58.7 million) to approach the atom-splitting success of post-COVID\u2019s top non-franchise earner \u2014 Christopher Nolan\u2019s Oppenheimer<\/a>, which took in $82.4 million in its first three days in 2023.<\/p>\n A cinematic love child of Interstellar, E.T., and 2015\u2019s The Martian<\/a> (which is also based on a best-selling novel by Andy Weir), Project Hail Mary stars Gosling as a high-school science teacher who finds himself involuntarily blasted into deepest space where he teams up with a nonverbal rock creature to combat a mysterious virus blotting out the sun. Overseas, the intergalactic epic pulled in an additional $60.4 million from 82 foreign markets for a cumulative gross of $140.9 million. Now, thanks to a raft of glowing reviews<\/a>, sky-high audience exit-polling scores, and commensurate word-of-mouth buzz, Project Hail Mary is well on its way to recouping its $200 production budget (which does not include another $150 million or so in prints and advertising costs). It\u2019s toppled F1: The Movie<\/a> for the biggest opening for any film released by a streamer in North America. And even more auspicious for PHM\u2019s longer-term playability: It doesn\u2019t face significant competition among wide-release titles until Universal\u2019s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie<\/a> hits cineplexes on April Fool\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n \u201cAmazon did an incredible job marketing it,\u201d says Shawn Robbins, Fandango\u2019s director of movie analytics and founder of Box Office Theory<\/a>. \u201cThis is by far their biggest launch. They are better known as a streamer. But this is the best example of the power they can wield as a theatrical distributor.\u201d<\/p>\n PHM\u2019s success comes at a make-or-break moment for Jeff Bezos\u2019s Hollywood money pit, which has spent both extravagantly and quixotically over its 16 years of existence in a bid to become a major purveyor of theatrical hits. Less than four years removed from Amazon\u2019s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM<\/a>, and one year and one month since finally assuming full creative control over that studio\u2019s crown jewel IP \u2014 the James Bond franchise<\/a> \u2014 Amazon MGM is rolling out a jam-packed 2026 roster. Chief among this year\u2019s 14 titles that Amazon execs like to call \u201cbig, bold, cinematic, global films\u201d: Masters of the Universe<\/a> (based on Mattel\u2019s looksmaxxer-coded He-Man toys; scheduled for release on June 5), Jack Ryan: Ghost War (with John Krasinski<\/a> making the jump from the Amazon Prime Video series<\/a> to a stand-alone film as Tom Clancy\u2019s most famous CIA operative; May 20), and Madden (the ever-riseable auteur David O. Russell<\/a> directs Nicolas Cage in a biopic about stentorian football coach-cum-commentator John Madden; November 26).<\/p>\n But outside Project Hail Mary, Amazon\u2019s 2026 has gotten off to a creaky start. In January, its Chris Pratt\u2013Rebecca Ferguson sci-fi detective caper, Mercy, debuted to a certified-rotten score on the Tomatometer<\/a> and slunk from theaters after earning just $54.5 million against a reported $60 million production budget. Amazon followed that up one week later with a 1,500-screen rollout of the First Lady doc Melania<\/a>: Twenty Days to History. It ended up taking in a relatively robust (for the moribund theatrical-documentary genre) $16 million but failed to claw back the $75 million in distribution and marketing fees Amazon shelled out for the \u201coutright bribe\u201d vanity hagiography. And last month\u2019s Chris Hemsworth\u2013starring heist-thriller Crime 101 sold a mere $65 million worth of tickets (versus a $90 million budget) to rank as the year\u2019s first major flop.<\/p>\n So what did Amazon do right with Project Hail Mary? \u201cFrom day one they treated this as a very important tentpole on their slate,\u201d Robbins says. \u201cThey started by showcasing it at Cinemacon<\/a> last year. The trailer released online last summer, so they got a massive head start on getting word out about the film. On top of the preexisting fan base for Andy Weir\u2019s novel<\/a>, the snowball kept rolling into this incredible momentum of buzz. And I\u2019m sure advertising across their Prime and streaming channels didn\u2019t hurt either.\u201d<\/p>\n Even more surprising: Despite outsize blockbusters in the genre like certain Star Wars installments, Star Trek reboots and Christopher Nolan flights of inter-dimensional fancy like Interstellar or Inception, sci-fi films are not consistent moneymakers. \u201cThis is a sensational opening for a science-fiction adventure,\u201d analyst David A. Gross notes in his FranchiseRE movie-industry newsletter. \u201cNovelist Andy Weir wrote the story as a standalone, but the weekend figure is more than double the average for a series launch \u2014 that\u2019s how strong this is. Critics reviews and audience scores are outstanding (an A CinemaScore). This is Amazon MGM\u2019s first big hit.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up for the Vulture Daily<\/p>\n An entertainment newsletter for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n