A month after coming to digital, Project Hail Mary will debut on streaming next week. But it won’t be on Netflix, Hulu, or Peacock. It won’t even be on Prime Video, which is owned by the same company that made it. No, Project Hail Mary will debut exclusively on MGM+ starting June 18. Which seems odd, and certainly disappointing if you aren’t a subscriber, but is also understandable.
You see, MGM is the company that produced and distributed the film, which stars Ryan Gosling and grossed almost $700 million worldwide. They put it together. They gambled on it. So, of course, they’d put it on their exclusive streamer first. Why not use the film’s good name and great reviews to get a few extra subscribers?
Well, because at the same time, MGM is owned by Amazon. So many probably expected the film to debut on the parent company’s much larger streamer, Prime Video. It all goes to Jeff Bezos anyway, right? What this does, though, is allow Amazon to take another bite of the apple. Force Prime Video customers who want to watch the movie (and are already paying) to pay a little more and add MGM+ to their subscription, which lets them watch it in the Prime app. Or, of course, others can access it via their cable provider or its own app.
Plus, we’d imagine that, in a few weeks, Project Hail Mary will naturally migrate over to Prime itself. After that, it may even make it to other streamers if there are deals in place. But, for now, it’ll debut in this much more specialized place, and while that stinks for those of us who may not subscribe to MGM+, we get it.
Based on a novel by Andy Weir (The Martian), Project Hail Mary stars Ryan Gosling as a middle-school teacher with an impossible task. He’s forced to travel deep into space and solve a problem that could end the world. There, he meets up with an alien named Rocky and, together, the pair tries to save both their civilizations. It’s a fantastic movie. Well worth a new streaming subscription, if you so choose.
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