LAS VEGAS – Movie theater owners didn’t get to meet a new James Bond. They did get Ryan Gosling.
To kick off Amazon MGM Studios’ first presentation at CinemaCon, Gosling and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller debuted the trailer for the epic sci-fi adventure “Project Hail Mary” (in theaters March 20, 2026), based on Andy Weir’s best-selling 2021 novel. Gosling promised the crowd they were the first to see the footage “other than my mom.”
“Hail Mary” stars Gosling as Ryland Grace, a middle-school teacher tapped to be the biology expert on a longshot mission to a solar system 12 light years away, in order to save humanity before a catastrophic event wipes out Earth. The footage shows Ryland both as an unwitting participant when he’s told he’ll be going on the cosmic journey (“I’m not an astronaut. I can’t even moonwalk,” he says) and also as a reluctant spaceman who meets an alien in similar dire straits. The being, named Rocky, is “the most lovable alien since E.T.,” Lord teased.
“It’s an insanely ambitious story, expansive in scope,” Gosling said. And knowing the audience, he emphasized how important it is to see the stunning visuals on a big screen. “Literally, we tried to put it on a TV once. It didn’t fit.”
The actor and producer copped to falling in love with the source material. Weir (who also wrote “The Martian”) explained the appeal in a 2021 USA TODAY interview: “Everyone loves survival stories, regardless of the setting. Whether it be Robinson Crusoe stranded on an island, Mark Watney stranded on Mars, or real-life Chilean miners trapped a mile underground, we all root for people to overcome the obstacles nature throws in their path.”
Colleen Hoover’s ‘Verity,’ ‘Masters of the Universe’ garner first looks
A video montage of upcoming Amazon MGM films ended with the visual “007” marked “Top Secret,” so a new Bond movie is in the works. (The company took full control of all things Bond in February.) While no casting or director announcements were made, studio executives noted that recently signed producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman are working on the film in London.
What the studio did bring to CinemaCon was a flurry of footage and A-listers for their upcoming projects later this year and in 2026. Some highlights:
- “After the Hunt” (Oct. 25): Director Luca Guadagnino and stars Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri introduced a trailer for the thriller, which features Julia Roberts as an Ivy League professor whose life is upended when her star student (Edebiri) alleges that she was raped by her teacher’s colleague (Garfield).
- “Mercy” (Jan. 23): Chris Pratt did a playful stunt in the same execution chair that his character sits in during the futuristic sci-fi thriller, where an LAPD detective (Pratt) has 90 minutes to prove he’s innocent of murdering his wife to an AI (Rebecca Ferguson) or else.
- “Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie” (Feb. 20): Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson chimed in via video message to debut the trailer for the family murder mystery, which centers on a shepherd (Jackman) who reads whodunits to his sheep nightly. When he dies under mysterious circumstances, it’s up to his flock to solve the crime.
- “Verity” (May 15): Author Colleen Hoover and stars Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett and Dakota Johnson sent in a video introducing their psychological thriller, about a struggling writer named Lowen (Johnson) hired to finish the books of injured best-selling author Verity Crawford (Hathaway) by Crawford’s husband Jeremy (Hartnett). The footage unveiled was dark and mind-twisting, including a bit where Lowen is seen kissing Jeremy only to pull away and see Verity’s bloody face.
- “Masters of the Universe” (June 5): A first-look featurette was shown for the action adventure based on the 1980s cartoon/toy franchise. Nicholas Galitzine rocked a very buff physique training to be He-Man, and director Travis Knight showcased many of the colorful heroes and villains, including Jared Leto as the evil Skeletor.
- “Is God Is”: This undated 2026 film was the wildest of the bunch, with first-time director Aleshea Harris adapting her own off-Broadway play. Kara Young and Mallori Johnson play sisters visiting their scarred mother (Vivica A. Fox), whose dying wish is for them to go on a road trip to kill the father (Sterling K. Brown) who burned them all years ago. Young called it a mix of “Greek tragedy, Afropunk and spaghetti Western.”