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New Sci-Fi Masterpiece Overtakes Tom Cruise’s Franchise-Ending Action Thriller

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Now in its sixth week of release in theaters worldwide, Project Hail Mary passed two massive box-office milestones. The movie held its ground this weekend, trailing The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and the week’s big new release, Michael. It added another $12 million to its domestic haul and passed the $300 million mark. The movie probably has the legs to hit the $350 million milestone by the end of its run. This is a terrific result for Amazon MGM Studios, which delayed the movie’s Prime Video release and put it back into select IMAX theaters for a one-week run. This is in contrast to its release strategy for Red One, starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, which landed on Prime Video only three weeks after debuting in theaters.

Red One failed to recoup its reported $250 million budget theatrically. Amazon’s other sci-fi release of 2026, the Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson-led Mercy, also fell short of its reported $60 million budget. Both movies, however, proved to be quite successful on streaming. Produced on a budget of more than $200 million, Project Hail Mary will likely deliver huge numbers on Prime Video as well, but its box-office performance has been nothing short of extraordinary. It has greatly benefited from enthusiastic audience support, an event-movie status, and excellent reviews. It now stands at a “Certified Fresh” 94% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 96% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz
Which Action Hero Would Be
Your Perfect Partner?

Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt

Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.

🎖️Rambo

🍸James Bond

🏺Indiana Jones

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🔧John McClane

🎭Ethan Hunt

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01

You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner?
The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.





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02

You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel?
How you get there is half the mission.





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03

You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do?
This is when you find out what someone is really made of.





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04

The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest?
Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.





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05

How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission?
Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.





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06

Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them?
The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.





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07

Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do?
Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.





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08

What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace?
A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.





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09

Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with?
No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.





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10

It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now?
The last question is the most honest one.





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Your Partner Has Been Assigned
Your Perfect Partner Is…

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

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Rambo

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

James Bond

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Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Indiana Jones

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

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John McClane

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

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Ethan Hunt

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

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Here’s How Much ‘Project Hail Mary’ Has Grossed at the Box Office

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and starring Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary is based on a bestseller by Andy Weir, who also wrote the novel that inspired The Martian. With this weekend’s performance, Project Hail Mary has shrunk the gap between itself and Ridley Scott‘s film. With more than $300 million domestically and $600 million worldwide, the film has also overtaken the $598 million lifetime global haul of the sci-fi-adjacent Tom Cruise-led tentpole Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the eighth Mission: Impossible movie was released to mostly positive reviews in 2025, but even with nearly $600 million at the worldwide box office, it was considered an underperformer because of a massive $400 million reported budget. It was marketed as the long-running action franchise’s last installment, and for once, it seems like they weren’t bluffing. Both Cruise and McQuarrie have found new projects, and the fate of the Mission: Impossible franchise remains undecided. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

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Release Date

March 15, 2026

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Runtime

157 minutes

Director
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Christopher Miller, Phil Lord

Writers

Drew Goddard, Andy Weir

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Producers

Aditya Sood, Amy Pascal, Andy Weir, Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, Rachel O’Connor, Ryan Gosling

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