Clocking in at around two and a half hours, Project Hail Mary is fairly long, and it could have been even longer. Like any movie based on a literary work, the film condenses the story for the medium, cutting out various storylines, subplots, and even entire characters that were present in the book. Some of these missing elements might have been present at one point during development of the big-screen adaptation, as directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller put together a gargantuan assembly cut to screen for some filmmaking friends. A key piece of feedback from all who attended led to Lord and Miller trimming to edit down to what fans saw in theaters.
During an appearance on the podcast Happy Sad Confused, Lord and Miller shared that there was a cut of Project Hail Mary that ran for almost four hours. “Our first official test screening went great, but we do a lot of earlier screenings for friends and family and other filmmakers and writers,” said Miller. “This movie was massive. When we finally got the assembly cut down to under four hours long, we subjected some filmmaker friends of ours to a three hour and 45 minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing.”
Lord added that “Get it shorter” was the main feedback note they received. “You just don’t know how the scenes are going to land with an audience,” he said. “We thought everything was charming, but some of those charming things didn’t land. It made it really easy to get it down to three hours.”
Sci-Fi Fans Won’t See the Four-Hour Project Hail Mary Cut
Based on the responses to Project Hail Mary, Lord and Miller were smart to heed the advice of their filmmaking friends. Project Hail Mary earned widespread critical acclaim and broke box office records in its opening weekend, meaning the final cut of the movie works extremely well. While fans of the book might have liked to have seen some of the missing aspects, Lord and Miller’s film tells a complete, well-rounded story that properly fleshes out its narrative and characters. Most importantly, the dynamic between Ryland Grace and Rocky is fully developed, giving the movie a strong emotional core that complements the high stakes of the plot. If the film ran longer, it might have negatively impacted the critical consensus, as there would have been complaints about it dragging on.
Of course, audiences love Project Hail Mary so much that they probably wouldn’t be opposed to watching an extra hour of the film, but that four-hour version will never see the light of day. Assembly cuts are standard practice for the film industry; it’s always better to shoot more than what you need and trim things down from there. Test screenings are held for the specific purpose of determining what works and what doesn’t. For something like Project Hail Mary, test screenings are extremely important. The film was a $200 million gamble on the part of Amazon, meaning there was pressure on it to be a box office hit. If the one constant feedback note was “get it shorter,” Lord and Miller had no choice but to cut things down.
Several films have director’s cuts available, but that won’t be the case here. Firstly, assembly cuts typically do not have finished visual effects; they are usually rough cuts of all the filmed footage and use temp elements to fill in the gaps. Project Hail Mary notably didn’t use green screens, but it still features plenty of digital effects. It would require a sizable amount of time and resources to complete VFX shots from the assembly cut. And since Miller described this cut as “embarrassing,” it doesn’t sound like that’s something the directors would be interested in doing. They seem happy with the way the film turned out.
That doesn’t mean fans won’t see any of the footage that was left on the cutting room floor. When it’s time for Project Hail Mary to hit home media, it’s possible that deleted scenes will be included as a bonus feature, giving people a small taste of what the assembly cut entailed. It would be interesting to see what was cut; sometimes, viewers feel a deleted scene would have improved an aspect of the movie or added more substance. If any of the scrapped footage contained more interactions between Grace and Rocky, people wouldn’t complain about seeing it.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
