Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary follows the story of science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), who wakes up on a spaceship light-years away from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction…but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

ILM’s work on the film consisted of several hundred visual effects shots, bringing to life the film’s interstellar environments, spacecraft, and extraterrestrial worldbuilding, including creating a stunningly accurate version of the solar system that the film is set in. Using data from the European Space Agency, ILM created over 1 billion stars rendered within 10cm of their actual coordinates to construct the most accurate rendition of the star system ever committed to film.

The ILM team also worked on three of the largest assets in the film that appeared in almost every shot, including the Hail Mary, Rocky’s ship, and the planet Adrian. Working closely with the filmmakers Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, ILM developed a fully realized digital asset of the Hail Mary that was capable of holding up in both intimate close-ups and wide interstellar vistas. 

Led by ILM visual effects supervisor Tristan Myles in collaboration with production visual effects supervisor Paul Lamberti and visual effects executive producer Adele Jones-Venables and visual effects producer Karen Clarke, ILM’s visual effects work was led in our Vancouver studio  with additional support from the teams in London and San Francisco.