Andy Weir doesn't see himself as a prophet of deep meaning; he sees himself as a guy who sells "fun" built on science. In a piece for Rolling Stone, CT Jones traces how the former software engineer turned his obsession with getting the science right into a career that's now fueling Amazon MGM's big-budget adaptation of his 2021 novel Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling. While Jones sees "timely themes" aplenty in the plot, Weir insists there's "never any deeper message" in his books. He puts it plainly: "I'm not trying to change your mind or set your opinion on anything. When you're done with my book, I just want you to put it back on the shelf and think, 'That was fun.'"
The piece digs into how Weir reverse-engineers his stories from technical puzzles (What fuel could make impossible space travel feasible? How would you actually survive on Mars?) and lets the story crystallize around the solutions. "When you stick to real science, that science will help you create the plot and the challenges." As for where that real science comes from, "I know more than the layman about science, but not as much as real scientists, so I know enough to search for what I don't understand," says Weir.
But the film doesn't take shape as a dry science class. "You don't have to actually teach [the audience] the science in such depth that they could later solve problems on a test," Weir explains. "They just need to understand what's going on. We're lucky if 5% of a book gets into a movie. It's just such a confined, constrained storytelling medium. So we just kind of skip all the intervening math and just tell them the answer. But I think most people just accept that we're probably right."
As far as people go, plenty of them are showing up: The Hollywood Reporter notes the film follows Oppenheimer as just the second nonsequel or nonfranchise movie to rake in at least $80 million domestically in its opening weekend. Read the full interview here, or read Space.com's rundown of the 10 biggest differences between the book and movie.
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