When Lego announced a set for the upcoming Project Hail Mary, many were excited, but more were surprised. Lego makes sets based on big movies all the time, but those are almost always from very well-established brands: Star Wars, Nintendo, Marvel, Minecraft, Lord of the Rings, etc. But here was a set for a PG-13 sci-fi movie based on a one-off novel about a man and an alien attempting to save their worlds through science. It is not a typical Lego set. But directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller wanted one anyway.
Speaking to io9 at the Los Angeles press junket for Project Hail Mary, Lord and Miller, who directed The Lego Movie and produced its sequel, admitted that their past relationship with the company “helped them a lot” in terms of getting this set made.
“They don’t normally do things that are not based on already successful franchises. Like a one-off movie like this, that’s its own thing,” Miller said. “But we told them to trust us. And we said, ‘Come to the set and see what it is and how special it is.'”
So, after “a million invitations,” the Lego team arrived in London to visit the set of Project Hail Mary. “Then we secretly cut a whole 10-minute piece to show them, and it blew them away,” Lord said. “They understood how special the movie was and how Lego fans were going to respond to it.”
“And they found a way to make a very cool set,” Miller added.
Ryan Gosling, the star of Project Hail Mary, agrees. “The Lego set’s amazing,” Gosling told io9. “It’s very surreal. It rotates, and it does the different gravity configurations. It’s pretty awesome.”
It’s awesome in the same way that Project Hail Mary is awesome. The film hits theaters on March 20, and tickets are on sale now. The Project Hail Mary Lego set will be released on March 1. Read more here.
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