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NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2013 Ryan Gosling<\/a> wanted a friend.<\/p>\n Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller<\/a> were in the midst of their largest production ever, the $200 million science-fiction adventure \u201cProject Hail Mary.\u201d<\/a> They were shooting some of the movie\u2019s early scenes, when middle school biology teacher Ryland Grace (Gosling) wakes up in deep space. After realizing he\u2019s the sole survivor on board the spaceship, he turns depressed and, eventually, drunk.<\/p>\n \u201cRyan was like, \u2018I just feel like I need a friend. I need a scene partner for this. I don\u2019t know what to do in here,\u2019\u201d Miller recalls. \u201cWe were like: OK, let\u2019s make a friend. So we scoured the set and found a mop and got a dress from the costume department. And we made a little mop friend for him to dance around with.<\/p>\n \u201cWe called it \u2018Moppy Ringwald.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In their two decades making movies together, Lord and Miller have shown a particular talent in making inanimate objects come alive. They did this especially in 2014\u2019s \u201cThe Lego Movie,\u201d<\/a> but little in their idiosyncratic filmography, from \u201c21 Jump Street\u201d to \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,\u201d hasn\u2019t involved some degree of playful reinvention.<\/p>\n \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d<\/a> may be their biggest challenge yet in breathing life into an improbable concept \u2014 and not just Moppy Ringwald. The film, adapted from Andy Weir\u2019s bestseller, stars Gosling as an astronaut sent far into space on a mission to save Earth that brings him into contact with a faceless, rock-based alien whom Ryland nicknames \u201cRocky.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt did seem like a crazy idea to make a movie with the hunkiest actor of his generation and a rock puppet,\u201d Lord said, chuckling, in an interview alongside Miller. \u201cI guess we\u2019re interested in difficult things.\u201d<\/p>\n A big-budget bet<\/p>\n Budgets of $200 million are usually reserved for the biggest franchises, but \u201cProject Hail Mary,\u201d which opens in theaters Thursday, is hoping to become a blockbuster built on originality. The film, comic and heartwarming, arrives with an enviable pedigree.<\/p>\n Weir\u2019s 2011 book \u201cThe Martian\u201d became the Oscar-nominated 2015 film<\/a>, which adopted the book\u2019s sense of joy and wonder for science. That movie\u2019s screenwriter, Drew Goddard (\u201cThe Cabin in the Woods,\u201d \u201cBad Times at the El Royale\u201d), also penned the adaptation to \u201cProject Hail Mary.\u201d Gosling was attached before the 2021 book was even published. Sandra H\u00fcller, the celebrated German actor of \u201cAnatomy of a Fall,\u201d<\/a> co-stars as the leader of a United Nations task force trying to save the planet from a star-eating virus called \u201castrophage.\u201d<\/p>\n Lord and Miller have made a career out of turning seemingly bad ideas into good movies, but \u201cProject Hail Mary,\u201d greenlit by MGM before it was acquired by Amazon, started off with clear crowd-pleasing possibilities, albeit with an unconventional extraterrestrial.<\/p>\n \u201cWe no longer get the benefit of low expectations,\u201d Miller says, laughing. \u201cSo we sort of try to do things that maybe seem like a good idea from the beginning. It\u2019s the evolution of our career.\u201d<\/p>\n The result is something a little like a combination of \u201cInterstellar\u201d and \u201cDeep Space Homer.\u201d<\/a> Though the directors\u2019 first sojourn into space (the \u201cStar Wars\u201d spinoff \u201cSolo\u201d)<\/a> was famously aborted, \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d gives Lord and Miller a space odyssey entirely of their irreverent sensibility. While the movie shares Weir\u2019s physics-and-jokes approach from \u201cThe Martian,\u201d Lord and Miller are approximately the polar opposite of Ridley Scott.<\/p>\n \u201cIn both cases, the directors were perfect for the task ahead of them. Ridley Scott is really good at conveying grandeur, really letting the setting hit and capturing the scale of things,\u201d says Weir. \u201cBut \u2018Project Hail Mary\u2019 is a bromance. It\u2019s like a buddy comedy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s much more fast-paced, there\u2019s a lot of rapid dialogue, and that\u2019s Phil and Chris\u2019 bread and butter,\u201d he adds. \u201cYou can give them any random thing off the shelves and they can make a movie such that you care about its emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n Giving Gosling free rein, in space<\/p>\n Much of what distinguishes \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d is that, despite the size of its production, the directors were still able to make a loose-limbed comedy, with zero-gravity improvisation and interstellar pratfalls. Big budgets and copious special effects are usually kryptonite to comedy, but \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d gives Gosling, a not charmless performer, room to riff.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve learned throughout our career is that spontaneous moments are magical,\u201d says Miller. \u201cOur job was to prepare and prepare and prepare, but make sure there was room to play and room to chase an idea that might be inconvenient.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo one ever walked out of a movie going: \u2018Wow, that seemed so well planned,\u2019\u201d says Lord. <\/p>\n That included suspending Gosling in a spinning ring that allowed him to move where he wanted within the spaceship, designed by Charles Wood. And it involved following instincts. In one scene set at a karaoke bar, Gosling, after hearing H\u00fcller sing, felt her character needed a song. H\u00fcller picked Harry Styles\u2019 \u201cSign of the Times\u201d and the filmmakers rushed to secure the rights within 48 hours.<\/p>\n But their most important innovations had to do with Rocky. Weir had written him, he says, intent on going further than a humanoid creature with funny prosthetics. \u201cI wanted my alien to be truly alien,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe part of the book that made me go, \u2018Oh, god, I don\u2019t know how we\u2019re going to realize this,\u2019 was Rocky,\u201d says Goddard. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have the usual crutches that you have for loveable aliens. He doesn\u2019t have a face. He can\u2019t even exist in our atmosphere. He speaks in whale songs. He looks like the kind of alien that would normally be eating everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Goddard, a filmmaker, too, was happy to leave the problem-solving to Lord and Miller.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew Chris and Phil could figure it out,\u201d Goddard says. \u201cI knew from their background with animation and creating delightful characters out of thin air, they could do it.\u201d<\/p>\n A gift from Spielberg<\/p>\n To give Gosling a scene partner that went beyond a mop in a dress, Lord and Miller opted to hire a puppeteer to manipulate and voice Rocky. To find the right match, they even did chemistry reads between puppeteers and Gosling. James Ortiz got the role, and \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d lives off his and Gosling’s interplay.<\/p>\n \u201cYou never would have gotten that if you were like, \u2018OK, there\u2019s a tennis ball and a stick that\u2019s an alien here. Now be delighted by it,\u2019\u201d Miller says.<\/p>\n Hollywood loves to make merchandise of cute little aliens. Faces are usually a part of that. But the unique challenges of \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d were what most intrigued Lord and Miller. The common denominator to their movies, Lord says, is that they all begin with a thought process of \u201cIt\u2019s impossible,\u201d followed by \u201cunless \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEven \u2018Spider-Verse\u2019 was like: Oh, this is going to be the seventh \u2018Spider-Man\u2019 movie. Nobody wants this \u2014 unless \u2026\u201d says Lord. \u201cAudiences want to watch a movie put itself in a box, and wiggle out of it like Houdini.\u201d<\/p>\n