Project Hail Mary Opens to $140.9 Million, Amazon MGM's Biggest Box Office Hit

Ryan Gosling nearly matched what Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer accomplished in 2023. Project Hail Mary opened to $80.5 million domestically in its debut weekend, falling just $1.9 million short of Oppenheimer's $82.4 million record for non-franchise films and making it only the third such movie in the past decade to cross $70 million on opening weekend, joining Oppenheimer and Jordan Peele's Us.

The global haul reached $140.9 million, with $60.4 million from international markets, instantly becoming the biggest opening of 2026 and the largest in Amazon MGM's history. The studio's previous record belonged to Creed III, which opened to $58 million in 2023.

The numbers shattered prerelease estimates. Financial projections had placed the domestic opening between $50 million and $65 million. The actual figure cleared even the high end of those projections by $15 million.

"We believe deeply in the Hail Mary, and it's clear audiences do as well," said Kevin Wilson, Amazon MGM's head of domestic distribution. "What we're seeing in theaters — the energy, the exit scores, the word-of-mouth — is everything we believed this film would deliver."

The film opened on 4,007 domestic screens, with premium formats driving an outsized share of revenue. Large-format screens accounted for 56% of the weekend's gross, while IMAX alone represented 24% of the total. Box office tracker EntTelligence estimated the $80.5 million translated into roughly 5 million ticket buyers.

Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a man who wakes up alone with little memory aboard a spacecraft tasked with saving the sun from dying. The film adapted Andy Weir's 2021 novel, the second Weir book screenwriter Drew Goddard has brought to the screen after The Martian in 2015. MGM purchased the rights from Weir in 2020 for $3 million, with Gosling signed by March of that year and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller attached two months later. Amazon's $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM in March 2022 folded the production into its studio portfolio.

Project Hail Mary now holds a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes and topped F1: The Movie as the biggest opening weekend for any film distributed by a streamer in North America. Its closest modern space-film predecessors cleared far lower thresholds: The Martian opened to $54.3 million in 2015, Gravity to $55.6 million in 2013, and Interstellar to $47.5 million in 2014.

The opening is a significant inflection point for a studio that has struggled to convert its Hollywood spending into consistent theatrical returns. Amazon MGM is building toward a packed 2026 slate of 14 films its executives describe as "big, bold, cinematic, global films," including Masters of the Universe on June 5 and Jack Ryan: Ghost War starring John Krasinski.

The financial bar ahead remains steep. Project Hail Mary reportedly needs $500 million in total grosses to break even. It faces no significant wide-release competition until Universal's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opens April 1, giving the film a clear runway to build on one of the strongest non-franchise openings in years.