Ryan Gosling has a new best friend, and it’s a puppet. Project Hail Mary is out today, and Gosling has been talking about Rocky at every single press stop like he genuinely misses him.
The Rock Alien Stole the Whole Film
“We’re having a real relationship, as much as you can with a faceless rock alien puppet,” Gosling said. He also called Rocky his “alien best friend,” which is a sentence nobody expected to come out of a major Hollywood press tour, but here we are.
Rocky is a five-legged, spider-shaped creature with no face and expressive, claw-like hands. Not CGI either. James Ortiz built and operated the puppet on set and voiced the character, too.
Gosling had a physical scene partner in front of him for every take. The reviews all picked up on it. Almost every single one pointed at the Grace and Rocky dynamic as the reason the film works.
The story follows Ryland Grace, a former science teacher who wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there. His crew is dead. He pieces together that he’s been sent solo to figure out why the Sun is losing energy to a microbe called “Astrophage.” Rocky shows up about halfway in, on the exact same mission for his own planet.
They work out how to communicate and go from there. Two scientists from different worlds are trying to solve the same problem. That’s the whole movie.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directed it. Drew Goddard wrote the script, the same guy who adapted The Martian for Ridley Scott back in 2015. Andy Weir wrote the original novel in 2021, and it sat on the New York Times bestseller list for 28 weeks.
The film is in theaters today, March 20, 2026, through Amazon MGM Studios. It runs 156 minutes. Reviews are strong. The main knock is that the ending drags a little. Everything else, people seem to be on board with, especially the puppet.
Gosling doing press for a film where his best scene partner has no face and no dialogue is not something that happens every year. Project Hail Mary is worth the 156 minutes.
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