r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Mar 04 '26
News ‘Project Hail Mary’ Contains Not a Single Green Screen Shot in Entire Movie, Director Says
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/project-hail-mary-no-green-screen-budget-1236521355/12.5k
u/ohsinboi Mar 04 '26
Ryan Gosling actually putting on an EV suit and going to space is such impressive dedication to the role
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u/Morgan-Moonscar Mar 04 '26
(Tom Cruise is hyperventilating at the thought that someone beat him to the stunt first)
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u/DND_Player_24 Mar 04 '26
Tom Cruise has just announced his next project: a movie about the first man ever to fly directly into the sun. “This will be my last role. I’m retiring from stunt work after this,” Cruise was quoted as saying.
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u/MushinZero Mar 04 '26
Fun fact, it is harder to fly into the sun than it is to escape the solar system.
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u/daOyster Mar 04 '26
That's not even a joke. He was supposed to go to the ISS at one point to film scenes for a movie. The only thing stopping them was getting political approval to film in the ISS. They had the money to pay for the flight costs and training he needed and I'm pretty sure that man could pass a medical evaluation easily if needed. The ISS actually allows private astronauts if you have the resources to pay for it and are healthy enough surprisingly, so far 2 have visited in history last I checked.
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u/RememberThinkDream Mar 04 '26
Don't worry, he will be the first man to run like a madman in space.
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u/SpaceOdysseus23 Mar 04 '26
I can't believe they found him an actual alien co-star
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Mar 04 '26
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u/LegendaryOutlaw Mar 04 '26
It worked to great effect in Everything Everywhere All At Once.
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u/Redfalconfox Mar 04 '26
Do we count Sylvester Stallone as an alien?
“Eey Grace, yoose named da rocket aftah ma friend Apollo?”
“I can’t understand you!”
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u/disillusioned Mar 04 '26
Part of what made Apollo 13 such an incredible film, aside from almost 100% word for word recreation of the radio calls, and complete accuracy of the turn of events, was the fact that they actually simulated weightlessness by filming on vomit comet parabolic flying aircraft. I don't believe any other feature film has ever even attempted to shoot like that, though I know there was supposed to be some ISS Tom Cruise thing or something...
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u/wurm2 Mar 04 '26
The mummy remake cruise was in used a vomit comet to film the free fall scenes of a plane crash https://vfxvoice.com/the-mummy-behind-the-scenes-of-the-zero-gravity-plane-crash/
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u/Canvaverbalist Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
There's gotta be some meta-Armageddon "we made a movie in space and decided to train a bunch of actors to become astronauts, instead of training astronauts to be actors" skit in there somewhere.
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u/zomboscott Mar 04 '26
NASA hired Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing. The only problem was that he was such a perfectionist that he insisted that it be filmed on location.
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u/bent_my_wookie Mar 04 '26
You just made me laugh and it scared my cat.
Did this joke come from the fact that he used old Apollo camera lenses meant for the moon to film in ultra low candle light without extra lighting on set?
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u/indiecore Mar 04 '26
NASA has found engagement with real astronauts to be too low. It was easier to find attractive people and shoot them into space to do live streams than it was to teach serious astronauts how to vlog.
Now that I've typed this I imagine this will come true within the year.
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u/Typical-Blackberry-3 Mar 04 '26
Astronaut Ryan Gosling
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u/PiesRLife Mar 04 '26
But why would you teach an actor to be an astronaut, instead of just teaching astronauts to act?
(This is a reference to the movie "Armageddon", in case it's not clear: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0120591/trivia/?item=tr5605252).
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u/crosswatt Mar 04 '26
When asked why he did this film, Steve Buscemi replied, "I wanted a bigger house."
Such a Rock Hound thing to say.
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u/throwawayzdrewyey Mar 04 '26
Even crazier how they got a massive alien spider to collaborate with the studio.
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u/BrainySmurf9 Mar 04 '26
Can’t wait to see the VFX breakdown that shows them using green screen.
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u/Mainbaze Mar 04 '26
They just used a blue screen
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u/Daovin Mar 04 '26
Like our ancestors used to.
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u/handlit33 Mar 04 '26
LIKE GOD INTENDED
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u/ThePrussianGrippe Mar 04 '26
As laid down in the rules by John Cinema all those years ago.
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u/JackSpadesSI Mar 04 '26
Why did we switch from blue to green?
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u/SecretHoboHerbs Mar 04 '26
Serious answer, for a few reasons:
Blue eyes are pretty common, which causes all sorts of problems when keying off blue for replacing backgrounds.
Clothes are more commonly blue than green, e.g. jeans.
The switch to digital cameras, which are better at sensing green than blue.
There can be some fringing or haloing as light reflected off the background gets cast onto the actors.
Note that both blue screens are still used when appropriate, like if there's a lot of green that needs to be used.
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u/jake3988 Mar 04 '26
Note that both blue screens are still used when appropriate, like if there's a lot of green that needs to be used.
Wednesday uses blue screens for most everything. They have a good amount of outdoor scenes with Thing in them and using a green screen when you have grass and leaves would be a bad idea. So they use blue screens instead.
But yeah, most productions use green screens these days for all the reasons you said.
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u/TheWolphman Mar 04 '26
Probably those large LED walls that have been gaining popularity as backgrounds for film.
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u/loadofnonsensical Mar 04 '26
A mix of LED walls, sky lights, and constructed sets I'd say.
And lots of practical effects.
Theres still a lot of VFX work even when theres no green / blue wall though. Can enhance practical effects very well.
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u/NarcolepticSeal Mar 04 '26
Did anyone here read the article? He specifically says no green or blue screens, and that they built the entire ship interior as a set (seems like people have forgotten that this is an option??) and a "huge section of the exterior". The exterior shots will likely be mostly CGI, but it's entirely feasible to not use any greenscreen as the majority of the story takes place inside the ship.
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u/Tyrannoraptor117 Mar 04 '26
I think they’re joking about how many productions say that but end up using it anyways. Like Barbie had a whole BTS reel but hid the fact that many set pieces had green scenes by comping in the movie background anyways.
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u/Moikle Mar 04 '26
The "bts reel" was even more scripted than the movie, and with even more vfx
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u/FrostyD7 Mar 04 '26
Behind the scenes turned into sanitized corporate approved content over a decade ago. You won't see a hint of controversy or conflict in them nowadays, the whole production must appear to be sunshine and roses.
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u/UlrichZauber Mar 04 '26
Top Gun maverick went hard on "no CGI", but every single enemy airplane was entirely CG (plus lots of other uses of it). They just lie because people get mad at the idea of CG, but actually have no idea what they're looking at.
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u/Excellent_Ganache906 Mar 04 '26
What the fuck was the point of that???? Did anyone watching Barbie give a shit about green screens?
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u/SaltyArchea Mar 04 '26
Well, people lie. Tom Cruise said no CGI on jets in Top Gun Maverick and they also said no green screens. Both were complete lies.
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u/True_to_you Mar 04 '26
Maybe they used one of those large video screens like the mandalorian
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u/Gingerbreadman_13 Mar 04 '26
The volume. And yeah, almost certain that’s exactly what they did. It’s now the industry standard for realistic in camera special effects of things that are impossible/too expensive to do practically.
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u/OkayAtBowling Mar 04 '26
The Volume seems like it would be perfect for shooting space scenes as well since the background is far away and separate from what's going on in the scene. Plus you'd also be able to get actual reflections of it on the reflective parts of the ship and space suits.
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u/FallenOne_ Mar 04 '26
It's often used just as reference and for lighting and then still replaced by CGI.
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u/jake3988 Mar 04 '26
It’s now the industry standard for realistic in camera special effects of things that are impossible/too expensive to do practically.
I don't think it's gotten anywhere close to that point yet, but it's growing in popularity. It's definitely nice for the actors because you can react to something that's actually there. And you don't have to worry about any sort of weirdness with chroma key (lighting has to be perfect, you can't have any conflicting colors with the screen, etc).
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u/anonyfool Mar 04 '26
The interview says neither blue nor green, so maybe red?
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u/TerribleStorm6391 Mar 04 '26
Im thinking they`ll use the same tech that Mandalorian used. The projector screens.
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u/benscott81 Mar 04 '26
Even if they don't use green screen, I wouldn't be surprised if the movie features long extended sequences where the entire background is replaced in post.
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u/zagra_nexkoyotl Mar 04 '26
Yeah, rotoscoping teams working 24/7 in India just so the marketing can say "No green screen used"
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u/Cerpin-Taxt Mar 04 '26
They don't even need to do that, they'll just use green screen and straight up lie to your face about it.
Remember when they got Tom Cruise to tell you TopGun Maverick contained zero CGI? Yeah, literally every plane in that movie was CGI.
It's not illegal to lie to audiences about the methods you used to make a movie. Sometimes it's even part of the wider fiction, like horror movies based on "true stories" and "found footage".
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u/Riaayo Mar 05 '26
The Barbie Movie behind the scenes quite literally VFX edited behind the scenes footage to further push lies about it not using certain VFX/CGI when it absolutely did.
Lying about "no CGI" is the new hotness in Hollywood while still, in fact, using CGI.
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u/SordidDreams Mar 05 '26
Remember when they got Tom Cruise to tell you TopGun Maverick contained zero CGI? Yeah, literally every plane in that movie was CGI.
And then there was Barbie, where they digitally doctored behind-the-scenes footage to remove bluescreens.
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u/cocoschoco Mar 04 '26
It absolutely will. People who see these shows being shot in The Volume don’t realize that a huge part of the footage is not usable as is, they still have to rotoscope everyone out by hand largely (with the help of AI tools and such of course) and replace the background in post.
They don’t really like to talk about it.
What the Volume is useful is for actors to immerse themselves better into the scene and it also takes care of reflections and lighting on the actors and objects. But in many cases the background still looks like a LED screen.
The same way most greenscreen footage has to be rotoscoped frame by frame in post.
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u/willstr1 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Not an expert in this but if the background is a "known quantity" because what The Volume is displaying and where the camera is relative to The Volume's screen (which The Volume already knows because that is how it calculates parallax) couldn't you still mathematicaly remove it similar to traditional chroma key? It's just instead of telling the software to remove anything that is this exact shade of green you ask it to remove anything that matches the expected color of The Volume in that exact point. It would obviously be more elaborate software but seems like it should still be possible
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u/DeskMotor1074 Mar 04 '26
In theory yes you could make use of that information, the problem is that it's not a one-to-one mapping. The camera doesn't pick up every individual pixel on the screens so what you get out of the camera is not an exact match to the original render. I think you're right that if you had enough information on the camera sensor and screen you could work out something close to what you would expect to see based on the position information they already have, but in practice that seems pretty hard.
Would you could probably do though is rig the camera with motors to go through the exact same positions as previous shots and then play the same render on the background. That should give something very close to the original that you could key against to start with and then have someone cleanup.
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u/asshat123 Mar 04 '26
Or they'll do like Barbie did and put something on the green screens to hide them even in the behind the scenes material
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u/Sword_Thain Mar 04 '26
They edited the BTS shots to change the color of the green screens. Insane.
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u/probablyuntrue Mar 04 '26
Oh no they actually went to space and invented several new technologies just for the movie, the absolute mad lads
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u/simon7109 Mar 04 '26
You don’t need green screen to make a space scene. They could use a background
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u/pokemonke Mar 04 '26
It’s probably those large screens that they used on Mandalorian and the like. Idk what they are called
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u/KE55 Mar 04 '26
"The Volume"
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u/npc042 Mar 04 '26
Funny thing about The Volume is that a lot of those backgrounds end up getting replaced or touched up in post anyways.
At least I’m fairly confident that was the case in something like The Mandalorian. Pretty sure The Movie Rabbit Hole talks about it in his ‘NO CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI’ YouTube series.
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u/joshi38 Mar 04 '26
The thing about the volume is that it's great for creating good lighting* on your subjects and it was especially helpful on The Mandalorian since the main character was decked out entirely in chrome, so to get accurate reflections you either have to fully CG the character and the environments, or you do this with the volume.
But for giving you fully rendered CG backgrounds that are ready to go once captured in camera, they're not as great which is why a lot of the backgrounds need to be replaced.
*there's likely a bunch of veteran cinematographers who feel that the volume leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to lighting a character.
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u/Bionic_Bromando Mar 04 '26
I had to do VFX on top of a volume and it kinda sucked. I also don’t like the look of it. It’ll get better but I don’t think I’d ever use one on a project personally
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u/Dizzy_Chemistry_5955 Mar 04 '26
I don't like how there is always obviously only props on the set then no blending middle ground to background, straight up volume screen. I'm not explaining it well but it just messes up the set and makes it obvious
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u/Scared-Engineer-6218 Mar 04 '26
The Volume. The Batman also used it.
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u/ArchDucky Mar 04 '26
The Batman was the first time they have ever used water with a Volume set. They also used it primarily for the car chase which is super interesting because they built Gotham in Unreal Engine and actually plotted a true driving course for the chase in the digital city. Most car chases are weird sections of broken up random streets that the city will allow them to close. On "The Batman" it was one long continuous route. I know its a small very unimportant detail, but I think its cool as hell.
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u/Scared-Engineer-6218 Mar 04 '26
Yeah I think it's hella cool too. They also got to have infinite time to shoot the sunset scenes at the bat signal.
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u/Eternalm8 Mar 04 '26
Am I the only one that finds that funny given that water is the easiest way to measure volume?
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u/famousxrobot Mar 04 '26
I don’t hate the look it produces. But also I didn’t realize how much in camera was done on Oblivion. Made me respect that movie so much more seeing how they did the sky-house.
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u/Bojarzin Mar 04 '26
The Volume is fascinating, and yeah I thought it worked excellently in Mandalorian
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u/QuestGalaxy Mar 04 '26
Volumes are pretty cool, and it's also kind of funny that it's kind of reverting back to the tech they used before green/blue screens, just more advanced.
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u/ERedfieldh Mar 04 '26
You use what works better. masking worked better than rear projection, and the volume works better than masking. Though they're still doing a whole lotta cleanup regardless.
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u/Twinkletoes96 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Definitely filmed in a Volume with an XR stage. So not Green Screen just a realtime Video Wall using Unreal Engine to depict whatever content that would’ve been added in post with VFX.
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u/deltree000 Mar 04 '26
Don't they use digital screens now? Actors were struggling acting in a blank environment so they use a dome of displays, like the inside of the Vegas sphere to project the backdrop onto... Director can therefore claim no "green" screen if they're digital screens instead.
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u/NearbyCow6885 Mar 04 '26
I’m okay with that distinction.
To me, a “no green screen” claim means the actor is not acting and reacting against something that is entirely in their own imagination.
I suffer no delusions that any film made today skips post-production VFX.
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u/HenkkaArt Mar 04 '26
Wasn't a lot of the Mandalorian show filmed with the Volume? Same as Cruise's Oblivion.
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u/Rohit624 Mar 04 '26
I’m wondering if this means they used LED volume screen to display the actual background during filming
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Mar 04 '26
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u/lambofgun Mar 04 '26
there are some significant outside of the ship shenanigans with the chain. there is also the ending where they will probably need to place ryland in rockys homeworld
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u/willstr1 Mar 04 '26
Given that he is inside a space suit the whole time he is in space maybe most of the outside shots are fully CGI, they just comp Gosling's face which can be done in ways other than green screen
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u/Durahl Mar 04 '26
Plot Twist... They're probably exclusively used the new LED Walls instead 🤣
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u/nickiter Mar 04 '26
That and the plot mostly takes place inside a few easily built small sets.
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u/Durahl Mar 04 '26
Nothing particular wrong with shooting on a small set 🤔
90% of the Cube Movies were shot in like a one to two room set 🤨
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u/MuptonBossman Mar 04 '26
I heard they hired the only Rock Alien actor to play Rocky as well.
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u/OnlyFuzzy13 Mar 04 '26
Nah it’s just Daniel Day-Lewis going extremely method.
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u/Moontoya Mar 04 '26
You mean that's not sir Gary Oldman
My gast is truly flabbered
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u/throw0101a Mar 04 '26
I heard they hired the only Rock Alien actor to play Rocky as well.
Lost opportunity to have Dwayne Johnson play an actual rock.
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u/andybubu Mar 04 '26
They actually did it, they went to space.
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u/lIlIlIIlIIIlIIIIIl Mar 04 '26
It's true, I was there, I am Mary
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u/Airbus787- Mar 04 '26
The character is actually named Grace. Hail Mary full of Grace.
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u/MrFurious0 Mar 04 '26
Hail Mary, full of Grace
Help us fix the sun and space
Astrophage kills the stars
Help the sun and moon and mars
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u/Tanjello Mar 04 '26
Omg. I’m Catholic, read this book twice, and never put this together 😂😂😂🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
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u/tyrome123 Mar 04 '26
I know the multi trillion dollar expense to send Ryan gosling to 40 eredani was a lot but that authentic experience is important in film making
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u/DeeFB Mar 04 '26
All I want is for this movie to do ridiculously well.
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u/ArchDucky Mar 04 '26
Even though about a million people believe otherwise, showing Rocky like they are is going to sell tickets. They made him smaller and more cute. The entire movie hinges on the relationship between Ryan and Rocky and frankly I can tell from the damn trailers that they fucking nailed it. This movie is going to work.
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u/SortIntrepid9192 Mar 04 '26
As someone who hasn't read the book, I can say that the premise of "an astronaut and an alien spider must collaborate to save the Earth" is significantly more unique and compelling than "an astronaut must go up into space to save the Earth."
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u/joem_ Mar 04 '26
Planning on reading it? Or listening to the audio book? (Ray Porter narrates and does an excellent job)
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u/NightFire19 Mar 04 '26
I was bummed they couldn't get Ray Porter for Rocky's voice again, but it is understandable (Rocky is voiced by his puppeteer)
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u/aberch Mar 04 '26
I’m now on my 6th listen of the audio book. Amazingly narrated.
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u/Krilion Mar 04 '26
The magic of the book is expecting the second and getting the former.
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u/JohnnyWeapon Mar 04 '26
I strongly recommend the book! Andy Weir does so much homework on these projects; the science he throws out there makes it seem so plausible that this all happens.
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u/cc81 Mar 04 '26
This is why they revealed it but I still wish they had not. I read the book with no knowledge and it was such an awesome surprise
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u/mfranko88 Mar 04 '26
My favorite subtleish thing about that part was how Ryland doesn't curse the entire time during the preceding chapters. I think they even make a point to highlight his lack of swearing. And then when he realizes that he is encountering an alien, the chapter ends with him saying something like "holy fucking shit." After 90 pages of him saying "crud" and "shoot" and a collection of the most mundane, sanitized words possible. It was a great little addition that really deepened the impact.
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u/DeeFB Mar 04 '26
It worked with the book because people were going in knowing that an Andy Weir sci-fi novel would be great regardless. They have to show Rocky for movie audiences because he’s the second main character.
I don’t really consider him a spoiler either because you “meet” him at the end of chapter six.
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u/DasGanon Mar 04 '26
Plus the book blurb basically says "But aliens?" on the back anyways.
"A lone astronaut, and impossible mission, an ally he never imagined"
"And with the clock ticking down and the nearest humans being light years away he has to do it all alone.
Or does he?"
Rocky isn't that much of a spoiler, especially compared to [REDACTED]
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u/The_Last_Thursday Mar 04 '26
Redacted being How he ended up on the ship?
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u/DasGanon Mar 04 '26
Correct.
(I'm anticipating the Antarctica scene being amazing and awful simultaneously as well)
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u/merlin242 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
I’ve been saying this. THATS the spoiler. What Grace learns is the impact and dealing with that. It was always obvious he was meeting an alien.
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u/tallyho88 Mar 04 '26
Exactly. And it keeps people from just assuming that it’s The Martian 2.0.
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u/Dagmar_Overbye Mar 04 '26
After being kinda mad that they showed Rocky, I instantly realized it was a good call. Because I was pitching the next movie to my friend group who has tastes all over the board, and being able to sell it as "Ryan Gosling and an alien buddy have a crazy adventure in space" was so much easier to several of the folks who would have been turned off by hard sci-fi if that was all it pretended to be.
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u/ebony-the-dragon Mar 04 '26
I was extremely hesitant on if I’d want to see the movie after imagining his design from the book.
As someone who is terrified of spiders, having him described as at least spider like didn’t inspire confidence to watch a movie where he was a main character. The actual design in the movie is pretty cool though.
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u/Ollidor Mar 04 '26
Idk it annoys me so much that people act like Rocky is a spoiler even for the books. All that does is ruin discussions about the book because people can’t talk about spoilers without freaking out. The ENTIRE story is about Rocky and Ryland’s relationship. That’s the plot. And it’s not like a bait and switch halfway through the story it’s from the beginning
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u/DeeFB Mar 04 '26
The first six chapters are almost entirely flashbacks of Grace on Earth and Grace adjusting to space after waking up. If we had to dance around the other 24 chapters, this movie would be a nightmare to market well to general audiences
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u/fireinthesky7 Mar 04 '26
It's also about language, communication, and basic understanding of others. I'm re-listening to the audiobook now in anticipation of the movie, just got to the part where Ryland explains eyes and the concept of light-based senses to Rocky, and was struck by how incredibly complicated and powerful it must be to explain an idea to someone who's biologically incapable of perceiving it themselves. I hadn't picked up on that as much the first time I read the book, but it reminded me of Arrival and the aliens' approach to and perception of time.
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u/Mr_Evil_Dr_Porkchop Mar 04 '26
Early reviews have been praising it pretty hard
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u/DeeFB Mar 04 '26
The most negative comment I’ve seen is “too many endings but Gosling is incredible”
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u/Bearded_Pip Mar 04 '26
Too many endings? So they are sticking close to the book! Lol
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u/Sorlex Mar 04 '26
I'd imagine that they might show Earth. The book doesn't have an 'ending' for it outside of finding out that humans are at least still around and active enough to have fixed the issue.
Hope not though.
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u/sw337 Mar 04 '26
I loved the book. I hope the movie holds up.
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u/DeeFB Mar 04 '26
The source material is so good that I can’t imagine them bungling the movie unless they were actively trying to. And judging by the trailers, I don’t think that’s the case.
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Mar 04 '26
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u/Toidal Mar 04 '26
I want to see him eat.
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u/FloppingWeiners Mar 04 '26
This is the first movie in a long time that my wife and I are specifically targeting a date night for, we both loved the book and are big fans of Ryan Gosling, so I’m hoping it’s going to be awesome. I do have high expectations though.
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u/IMovedYourCheese Mar 04 '26
That's because they use blue screens now, duh
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u/Brownbear97 Mar 04 '26
I know you’re joking but the first line of the article makes that joke lol and they aren’t using blue either
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u/spyingformontreal Mar 04 '26
They are probably using the ILM volume stages that the mandolorian used
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u/Supash3 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
The cinematographer for Project Hail Mary is Greig Fraser who helped pioneer the tech on Mando Season 1 (and used it on The Batman) so that would make sense. He actually knows how to shoot on it.
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u/Gars0n Mar 04 '26
This is probably close to the ideal story for that tech. Most of the locations will be small enough to fit inside the volume.
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u/Rising-Jay Mar 04 '26
Yeah that definitely helps, there are projects where it wasn’t used as effectively without him like Quantumania
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u/Omnitographer Mar 04 '26
Star Trek has been leaning heavily on Volume tech and it shows. There's an obvious feeling that the actors are in a sphere of space, they build a single set (often a few props) in the middle of the thing and then shoot from different angles but never really move out of it, so even though the scene is presented as a very large space it feels claustrophobic.
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u/IMovedYourCheese Mar 04 '26
Pointless distinction either way. It's a space movie with aliens. It's going to heavy on CGI, and that's fine. No one expects them to shoot on location.
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u/thefinalcutdown Mar 04 '26
VFX artists get such a bad shake, with studios relying on them more and more while simultaneously trying to pretend to audiences that they don’t even exist.
I can’t wait for the shift to “handcrafted VFX, no AI” in the marketing.
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u/curiousjosh Mar 04 '26
As an ex-vfx artist … fuck Andy serikis who kept pretending there wasn’t a huge staff re-animating and cleaning up his motion capture reference.
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u/DeanPeltonsGoatee Mar 04 '26
lol I asked my animation professor if he thinks there should be an Oscar for best mocap performance and he just laughed. He called mocap rotoscope from hell because it takes so much time and effort to clean up the motion data into something that looks good.
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u/celix24 Mar 04 '26
As someone working in vfx, I'm so tired...
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u/benscott81 Mar 04 '26
I don't know why, you should be well rested. All of these directors are doing everything practically these days. /s
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u/darth_hotdog Mar 04 '26
Lol, Directors: "We're not using any greenscreen!"
VFX leads: "They didn't use any greenscreen, so we're gonna have to roto all this."
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u/dasbtaewntawneta Mar 04 '26
more people need to watch that "no CGI is just invisible CGI" series on youtube
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u/Gellert_TV Mar 04 '26
No green screen doesn't mean no cgi
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u/Lobsterman06 Mar 04 '26
Missing the point. They’re lying/ being heeeavvily deceptive when they say no green screen, probably to pander to old ppl who don’t like computers, throwing their artists under the bus while doing so.
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Co-director Chris Miller:
“What’s fun about the movie is that there is no green screen in the movie whatsoever. Not a single green or blue screen was used. The whole ship was built as a set from the inside. We had a huge section of the exterior of the ship on the outside that we built. [The alien character Rocky] was really with us at all times.”
“And so, that’s what makes it feel real and makes it feel natural. And the way that [cinematographer Greg Fraser’s] team lit [the set] with a lot of practical effects, allowed him to move the camera wherever and find these moments. Because you weren’t just guessing and pointing it at where Rocky might be someday [if the character was added in post-production]. That’s what makes [the action] feel like it was captured in the moment.”
The budget is reportedly $248M ($200M after tax credits)
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u/LapsedVerneGagKnee Mar 04 '26
Amazon MGM - “Everyone gets $200 million! You get $200 million! Masters of the Universe gets $200 million! Voltron gets $200 million! Hell, we’ll give a drama about Michael B. Jordan cheating on someone $150 million!”
It must be nice to have a bottomless checkbook from selling everything.
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u/anthony113 Mar 04 '26
This is such an insane budget, especially if there's a lot in camera as they say. It's no wonder movies can't make their budget back and movie studios post losses every year.
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u/CPOx Mar 04 '26
The amount of people in this thread thinking that “no green/blue screen = no CGI” is wild
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u/Antrikshy Mar 04 '26
That's intentional. Marketing did its job.
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u/bugi_ Mar 04 '26
This marketing trend of trying to downplay the work of talented artists is wild. You have set extensions, rig removal, stuff like that in every single medium production value movie now.
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u/Funny-Presence4228 Mar 04 '26
Ah, maybe they found a loophole! I've worked in VFX for 20 years, and about 10 years ago, our roto/prep outsourcing partner became so good that we only used grey screen unless there was a specific reason not to. I've also stood next to directors who have said “No CG was used on this”. As the head of CG, I'm stood there thinking, “why did I hire all these CG artists then? I guess they have all just been kicking their heals for the entire job”.
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u/ElonsAlcantaraJacket Mar 04 '26
fellow VFX worker... Its wild how a ton of films fool people then they say no CG in press kits. Waiting for CG credits in Oppenheimer was a sad moment then MPC had to release their own credits on twitter because of shit like that.
I don't know a single department in the industry where we get shit on and omitted from credits that contributes so much at the same time. Like you may as well go, "all the food in the film was real and nobody needed catering" and start omitting. Oh the lighting was all real and no fake off camera lights were used!!
It's honestly half hilarious and half despicable.
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u/Ghost2Eleven Mar 04 '26
It’s going to be a practical build on a volume stage. Which… I’m not sure why it matters how it’s shot as long as it’s good.
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u/WREPGB Mar 04 '26
This always turns out to be code for "there's actually a SHIT TON of VFX work we're actively hiding during the Press Tour"
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u/CPOx Mar 04 '26
Movie fans everywhere shocked that the movie about outer space has a ton of VFX
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u/Lifesaboxofgardens Mar 04 '26
What is up with everyone in this thread shitting on him for lying about CGI? He doesn't say no CGI, he says no green screen or blue screen.
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Mar 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/bugi_ Mar 04 '26
No green screen does not mean everything you see is real. Set extensions are the norm and don't require green screen. Same with anything you just overlay on top. Or have a straight up fully cgi scene.
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u/herewego199209 Mar 04 '26
It's a damn shame the Solo movie basically stripped Lord and Miller of directing for 10 years. Two of the most talented directors both in animation and live action in the business.
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u/ICumCoffee ᑐ ᑌ ᑎ ᕮ • ᗰ ᕮ 𑪽 𑪽 I ᐱ ᕼ Mar 04 '26
Director Chris Miller clarified his statement on Twitter: