Two weeks into its run, we have to start talking not about whether “Project Hail Mary” is a hit but just how big of one. This weekend, Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s sci-fi epic starring Ryan Gosling surpassed $300 million at the global box office, which for an original film that’s not a sequel or based on humongous IP is pretty fantastic in just two weekends.
With a $200 million net production budget and marketing costs that could be as high as half that, you could argue that for Amazon MGM to really break even on this movie, it needs to make something like $600 million at the box office. But that’s no longer out of the question and is likely well within reach.
One thing distributors like to look at week to week is a movie’s holdover drop, or the percentage change from its opening weekend to the next. The less the drop from one weekend to the next, the more the film has staying power and can really see its box office rack up over the long haul. Generally, a drop of 50-60 percent is the norm for most movies, and something below that is quite good.
“Project Hail Mary” domestically only dropped 32 percent and made another $54.5 million domestic. We said last week that the opening weekend for “Project Hail Mary” was in “Oppenheimer” territory, that only “Oppenheimer” opened stronger for an original movie in the last 10 years. “Oppenheimer” in its second weekend dropped 43.4 percent and made just $46.7 million domestic.
The international second weekend for “Project Hail Mary” was even more impressive, with a 3 percent drop, bringing the international cumulative total to $136.9 million. Many markets where it played actually saw the film’s performance improve week to week. And compared to movies like “The Martian” (-41 percent) or “Interstellar” (-21 percent), international audiences are really starting to love it.
Just because it had a good second week doesn’t mean “Project Hail Mary” is going to match or surpass “Oppenheimer” at the box office, but it’s reasonable to think it could similarly leg out. “Oppenheimer” at the end of the day made $330 million domestic and $975 million worldwide. Compared to an $82 million opening weekend, $330 million is a multiple of 4 by the end of its run. With “Project Hail Mary” already pacing ahead of that, that would put it around $320 million domestic.
A lot then rides on the international haul, which right now is a little less than half of its overall total. But it’s not out of the question to think that the other global territories can easily help push “Project Hail Mary” above $600 million, which would have it right around the same ballpark as “The Martian” ($630 million), though that film too saw a majority chunk of its box office come from international audiences.
There are some other factors that will weigh on whether “Project Hail Mary” can really have legs the way something like “Oppenheimer” did. Next week it will have to come up against “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and will certainly fall out of #1 (“Oppenheimer actually holds the record as the highest-grossing movie to never hit #1, thanks to “Barbie”). Before long, it will have to contend with “Michael” and “The Devil Wears Prada 2” as we get into the summer, among others. The appeal of “Project Hail Mary,” though, is broad enough that none of those movies may truly eat into its success.
For now, “Project Hail Mary” is the highest-grossing movie of 2026 with no signs of slowing down, and it’s proving to be the type of movie Hollywood needs more of.
