“Project Hail Mary” was “the hardest movie” that Phil Lord and Chris Miller ever made — and they’re able to show their work. The filmmaking duo behind one of the year’s biggest hits built a deck to lead an audience through the challenging (but positive!) production process in a keynote presentation at IndieWire‘s Future of Filmmaking 2026 Summit presented by AT&T.
The one-hour presentation saw Lord and Miller dig into the behind-the-scenes process of the film‘s production design evolution, stop-motion tests and how some of the story’s emotional highs came about through spontaneity.
“We wanted to make a movie about doing difficult things. And in order to do that, we had to make the movie as difficult as possible,” Lord said with a laugh.
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“A movie about people coming together to accomplish something really hard,” Miller added. “This is what people have said to us about this movie.” The deck then revealed a slide reading, “You made me cry over a rock.”
“Hail Mary” stars Ryan Gosling as the sole survivor of an Earth-saving interstellar expedition. While he’s often the only human face on screen, Gosling gets quite the animated scene partner with Rocky, a fun-loving geode alien brought to life by a mixture of puppetry, computer-generated imagery, onstage vocal work and other production processes.
“We knew that we wanted to make him a physical puppet, at least to start. There’s a lot of CG in the movie, but we wanted the inspiration to be puppetry,” Lord said, presenting some stop-motion tests for the character. “I begged them to let us do the whole movie this way. It would have cost a billion dollars.”
“The movie lives and dies on their relationship,” Miller added. “The idea that Ryan could do the whole movie talking to a tennis ball on a stick by himself was impossible. We knew it had to be real scenes … The reason why you [watch ‘Star Wars’ and] believe Yoda — who’s kind of a shitty puppet — is because Mark Hamill believes it’s real and he confers authenticity onto it. Ryan really makes you believe because he has so much range and so much heart.”
Lord and Miller also broke down the origins of one of the film’s stand-out scenes: a flashback in which a usually stone-faced task force leader, played by Sandra Hüller, uncorks her own emotions with a karaoke performance of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times.”
“Ryan came to us and was like, ‘Sandra has an amazing singing voice. And she sings in between takes.’ And if you’ve ever saw the film ‘Toni Erdmann’ — if you haven’t, I recommend it — she sings and it’s fantastic,” Miller said.
“We concocted this idea that, instead of her staying apart from the karaoke thing to express how stoic and lonely she was, Ryan dares her to show her more human side that he can see,” Lord said. “The most uncool thing you can do to an actor is come to them 36 hours before and say, ‘Do you mind singing a song tomorrow?’ And she being a very gracious, incredible, delightful, super talented artist was like, ‘I’ll do it if I get to pick the song.'”
“Harry Styles! Really, really expensive song. That’s fine. That’s great,” Miller interjected jokingly.
“That should be easy to pay for and clear,” Lord said. “But you know what? Movie crews do impossible things.”
“We were able to get a clearance on it. We had no time to rehearse … And we didn’t tell the cast what she was going to sing,” Miller said. “The first thing we shot was the reaction of the cast, which is very genuine. We are very agog at how beautiful it was. And then we came around and shot Sandra’s side. And then our amazing editor — Joel Negron, who we’ve worked with for years — we ask them to cut it together like a dialog where she’s talking to the crew at first. And then by the end, she’s talking to Ryan directly.”
Watch Lord and Miller’s complete conversation in the video above.
IndieWire Future of Filmmaking 2026 Summit is presented by AT&T Untold Stories, an impactful multi-year collaboration between AT&T and Tribeca Festival that awards $1.2 million dollars, mentorship, and comprehensive support to the next generation of filmmakers looking to bring their films to the big screen. For more information, visit here.