Christopher Miller is no stranger to taking existing material and reshaping it into something new: He directed \u201cCloudy With a Chance of Meatballs<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe Lego Movie<\/a>\u201d and was a producer for \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse<\/a>\u201d and its sequel<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n However, for Miller, who was born in Everett and raised in Lake Stevens, Snohomish County, taking on a project like \u201cProject Hail Mary,\u201d the emotional, exhilarating new sci-fi film starring Ryan Gosling, represented something bigger than he\u2019s ever done before. At the same time, though his latest \u2014 based on the novel of the same name by Andy Weir \u2014 explores the vast reaches of space, his first inspirations were born from an unexpected and smaller place here on Earth: the Muppets.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was very young, I saw \u2018The Muppet Movie,\u2019 which is relevant to (\u2018Project Hail Mary\u2019) because there\u2019s a big puppet character in the movie,\u201d Miller said. \u201cIn the middle of watching that movie, when Fozzie Bear is driving a Studebaker and singing \u2018Movin\u2019 Right Along\u2019 with Kermit<\/a>, I had this thought of, \u2018Like, wait a minute, that\u2019s a puppet, how is he not crashing the car? Who\u2019s driving? How does he see where he\u2019s going?\u2019 I started thinking, \u2018How are these movies made?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The rest is history. After drawing elaborate diagrams in his childhood bedroom where he tried to piece together how this sequence was achieved, Miller realized he had caught the filmmaking bug. It\u2019s come to define the past several decades of his life and career.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAfter that, I started wanting to make my own things. My dad had gotten this big VHS recorder to record us as kids. I sort of took it over and started making these little short films with it,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n When it comes to his latest creation, the puppet Miller is referring to is an adorable alien named Rocky who plays opposite Gosling\u2019s protagonist as they both try to save the world. This central relationship is what grabbed hold of Miller when he was reading a manuscript of Weir\u2019s novel before it was published for the express purpose of adapting the story into a feature film.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI ended up staying up all night until about 5 in the morning in our kitchen because I couldn\u2019t put it down. I got really invested in Rocky as a character and their relationship,\u201d Miller said. \u201cIt had so much spectacle and scale and stakes and all the things you want from a movie that you want to see on a big, big screen. But it also had this intimate, human relationship at the heart of it, which all the spectacle in the world is nothing if you don\u2019t care about the characters and their journey that they\u2019re going on.\u201d<\/p>\n