‘Project Hail Mary’ Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on Film’s Conclusion: ‘No Way Are We Going to F**king Change This Ending’

Spoilers: The directors of the Ryan Gosling-starring sci-fi epic tell IndieWire why they (and screenwriter Drew Goddard) were so hellbent on keeping their film's ending (and the surprise when test audiences loved it, too).

[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for the ending of “Project Hail Mary.”]

If you haven’t seen “Project Hail Mary” yet, you probably shouldn’t read any further for a couple reasons.

The first is that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller discuss the ending of the film at length. So, that’s one. Second, this isn’t the kind of movie ending discussion where the takeaway is something relatively easy to note like, “And then Doctor Doom shows up.” (If that truly is the news you want out of this, I’ll just go ahead and confirm that Doctor Doom is not in this movie.) If you haven’t seen the film (or read Andy Weir’s novel, which it is based on), the words ahead will most likely have little meaning.

OK, now that that’s out of the way…

The reason the ending of “Project Hail Mary” is worth discussing is because it does stick pretty close to the source material of Weir’s book of the same name (something screenwriter Drew Goddard previously told IndieWire was also very important to him). But, cinematically, there is a moment late in the film in which Dr. Ryland Grace (a scientist, played by Ryan Gosling, tasked with trying to save humanity by finding a cure for a dying sun) risks his life and his safe return to Earth to, instead, rescue his new alien friend, Rocky (who is on a similar mission from his own world).

It’s a deeply emotional beat and I could envision a world in which a filmmaker might just want to wrap everything up right there and leave both of their futures more ambiguous. But, as I point out ahead, I am not a filmmaker, so that’s why I asked Lord and Miller if this was at all considered. And, in their answer, they explain why they were hellbent on keeping the book’s ending at any cost. (You can read the rest of our interview with the directors, which is significantly less spoiler-heavy, right here.)

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

IndieWire: Now, keep in mind, I’m not a filmmaker, so I don’t know what I’m talking about here…

Phil Lord: We are filmmakers and we also don’t know what we’re talking about. 

See, that’s not true. But the ending of the film is very close to the ending of the book, but near the end, there’s also a scene where Grace and Rocky reunite, which does seem like a good emotional movie ending. Was there any thought of ending there and leaving what happens next ambiguous?

Lord: We were ready for that. We are experienced enough to know the test audiences might help you understand where the movie has to end. And the funny thing was, they love the ending. 

It’s a great ending. But I could see, as filmmakers, there’s also a draw to an ambiguous ending that audiences might not like right away. 

Lord: They want those guys to live happily ever after.

Christopher Miller: We even thought, maybe they won’t want the part where he’s a schoolteacher to a bunch of rock babies. But they want that part, too! 

Lord: Or that they won’t like that he lives in a terrarium and he can never see the sun again. But they like that because he’s with his best friend. That is one of the things, ultimately, that really inspired us about the novel. And it inspired Drew [Goddard]. And we all kind of stacked hands on it and we were like, “No way are we going to fucking change this ending.” We are going to hold the line, because this makes the movie interesting. It differentiates it. And it’s something that I don’t ever expect to happen.

And it is a story about a guy who, unlike most space protagonists, he does not feel at home on Earth and lonely in space. He feels lonely on Earth and at home in space … with his one friend [laughs]. So it takes the trajectory of that character, not one where he goes over and back and starts where he finished. He’s out in the universe. He’s progressed to the next version of himself. 

Miller: Off to have new adventures.

Lord: Off to have new adventures! And for what is, ultimately, a character study of a person who is afraid to become who he is capable of being. Because he doesn’t want to have his feelings hurt, basically [laughs]. The fact that he gets to go off to the wild blue yonder is, to me, an apt ending. 

Miller: It’s like that song, “Home is wherever I’m with you.” 

Lord: There you go.

An Amazon MGM Studios release, “Project Hail Mary” is in theaters now.