[Culture &] Ryan Gosling’s ‘Project Hail Mary’ Tops North America on Opening Day

‘Project Hail Mary’ conquers theaters across North America… The arrival of an original blockbuster that follows in the wake of ‘Oppenheimer’

The SF blockbuster ‘Project Hail Mary’, starring ‘Ryan Gosling’, completely dominated the North American box office from the very first day of release.

According to Box Office Mojo, the film achieved an overwhelming opening score of about $33.12 million (roughly 49.9 billion won) across 4,007 theaters in North America on its opening day, shooting straight to No. 1. Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by ‘Andy Weir’, the author of ‘The Martian’, this movie is a massive-scale project with a production budget of $195 million. It immerses audiences in a dense journey of survival and communication as ‘Grace,’ a survivor who has lost her memory, encounters an unknown extraterrestrial lifeform.

Major outlet The New York Times (NYT) projected earnings of $77.10 million for the opening weekend. That’s the all-time best opening weekend record for ‘Amazon MGM Studios’. In particular, the fact that an original single film—not a franchise sequel—made more than $70 million in revenue during its release week is the strongest performance in 10 years since director ‘Christopher Nolan’’s ‘Oppenheimer’.

With a Rotten Tomatoes freshness score of 95% and a Popcorn score of 97%, ‘Project Hail Mary’ has won praise from both critics and audiences at the same time, proving both its mass appeal and its artistry—and signaling a new box-office frenzy.