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The Best Sci-Fi Movie of 2026 Officially Overtakes Steven Spielberg’s Underrated Video Game Movie

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The wins just keep on coming for directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller‘s Project Hail Mary, their first movie in over a decade. Starring Ryan Gosling, the sci-fi epic is based on a bestselling novel by Andy Weir, who also wrote the source material for Ridley Scott‘s The Martian. Project Hail Mary has had a phenomenal box-office run over the last month and a half, and will overtake The Martian this weekend. It opened to near-unanimous praise from critics and audiences and is now on track to reach the $700 million mark worldwide by the end of its theatrical run, which was extended by Amazon following the encouraging audience response.

This past weekend — its sixth — the movie passed the $300 million mark domestically and the $600 million mark worldwide, against a reported budget of more than $200 million. The movie has received some of the most enthusiastic reviews of any tent-pole this year and is poised to do stupendously well during the awards season. It should pose stiff competition to The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three, as The Academy tends to unofficially reserve a couple of spots for mainstream blockbusters. With a “Certified Fresh” 94% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 96% audience score on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Project Hail Mary is certainly going to be tough to beat.

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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz
Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like?
Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky

Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.

🏜️Paul Atreides

🖖Capt. Kirk

Princess Leia

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🔦Ellen Ripley

🔥Max Rockatansky

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01

How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher?
The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.





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02

What is your greatest strength in a crisis?
The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.





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03

What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for?
Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.





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04

How do you relate to the people around you?
Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.





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05

You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do?
How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.





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06

What has your heroism cost you personally?
Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.





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07

How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in?
Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?





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08

When everything is on the line, what keeps you going?
The answer is the most honest thing about you.





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Your Hero Has Been Identified
Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…

Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.

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Arrakis · Dune

Paul Atreides

You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.

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  • You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
  • You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
  • Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
  • That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.


USS Enterprise · Star Trek

Captain Kirk

You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.

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  • You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
  • Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
  • Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
  • That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.


The Rebellion · Star Wars

Princess Leia

You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.

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  • You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
  • You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
  • Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
  • That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.


The Nostromo · Alien

Ellen Ripley

You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.

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  • You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
  • Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
  • You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
  • When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.


The Wasteland · Mad Max

Max Rockatansky

You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.

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  • You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
  • Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
  • Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
  • That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.

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

It helps that the film has overtaken a handful of past sci-fi hits during its run. It recently passed the $292 million domestic haul of Christopher Nolan‘s landmark sci-fi blockbuster Inception. With $613 million worldwide, Project Hail Mary has also surpassed the $607 million haul of Steven Spielberg‘s sleeper hit 2018 movie Ready Player One, which was based on a bestselling novel as well. Ready Player One was described as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets The Matrix; it proved to be exceptionally successful in China and was produced on a reported budget of $180 million. Ready Player One remains Spielberg’s most recent sci-fi movie. He’s set to return to the genre this year with Disclosure Day. You can watch Project Hail Mary in theaters and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.


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Release Date
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March 15, 2026

Runtime

157 minutes

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Director

Christopher Miller, Phil Lord

Writers
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Drew Goddard, Andy Weir

Producers

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

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