Project Hail Mary: How Ryan Goslings Box Office Hit and Marketing Marvel Made Amazon MGM the Surprise Studio Star of CinemaCon

A year ago, Ryan Gosling — coming off his role as Ken in 2023’s Barbie — turned up in Las Vegas for Amazon MGM Studios‘ first official presentation at CinemaCon, sharing footage of Project Hail Mary, a film adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel about a geeky and but witty high-school teacher who finds himself hurtling through space on a mission to stop the sun from dimming and destroying life everywhere. Along the way, he meets a craggy alien he names “Rocky.”

The dream team behind the sleeper hit movie — as of April 19, it had already passed up the entire domestic runs of Dune: Part II and Gravity with more than $285 million in domestic sales and nearly $600 million globally — includes directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, screenwriter Drew Goddard, who adapted Weir’s The Martian for Fox, Amazon MGM’s film head Courtenay Valenti, who had spent years at Warner Bros., and Amazon Studios’ head of global marketing Sue Kroll, also a Warners’ alum.

With the drastic consolidation facing the Hollywood studio system, virtually all of the chatter heading into this year’s CinemaCon was focused on David Ellison’s audacious bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery after he had barely been anointed the new owner of Paramount in August 2025. (Warner Bros. is leaps and bounds ahead of Paramount in terms of the scope of its slate after Paramount suffered from years of financial neglect.)

But it was instead Amazon MGM that turned into a surprise studio star of CinemaCon, including when Gosling, the conquering hero, made a surprise appearance alongside Lord and Miler to thank theater owners for supporting Hail Mary. Gosling handed a bouquet of flowers and a thank-you card to a woman in the audience to pass around.

“In fact, tonight Amazon is doing more than talking about their commitment to theatrical – they’re honoring it by extending the exclusive theatrical window for Project Hail Mary,” he said. “This is something that was important to all of us as filmmakers, too.” He had already more than endeared himself to theater owners going into the convention. A month ago, Gosling made another surprise appearance, this time at a Saturday viewing of Project Hail Mary in New York City where he said Hollywood must stop blaming cinema operators and do a better job of making movies people want to see. The comments went viral, in another testament to his marketing instincts.

While the Disney, Universal and Warners presentations were widely praised, insiders lauded Amazon MGM as it becomes a full-fledged major studio. “The fact that Amazon MGM showed up for the second year in a row is great news for the industry,” says one studio chief.

The headlines generated by Gosling’s appearance at CinemaCon have already paid off. Part of Hail Mary‘s extended run included bringing the film back to Imax screens. After CinemaCon wrapped on April 16, over the April 17-19 weekend, Hail Mary fell only 15 percent in its fifth weekend, earning an estimated $20.4 million for a domestic cume of $285 million and a staggering $573.1 million globally. It was expected to fall at least 20 percent over the weekend, and even that would have been good.

“As I say to our team constantly, our ambition for theatrical film is in the top half of the first inning. Project Hail Mary is just the beginning. While some of our competitors have dipped their toes in and out of the theatrical waters, for us, this isn’t a test or an experiment. Our commitment to release at least 15 films every year into your theaters is on schedule,” Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios told exhibitors at CinemaCon. “And to support that commitment, we are building an international distribution organization – one we hope to have up and running later this year.”

To that end, Amazon has hired Helen Moss, a former longtime international executive at Paramount Pictures. Once the foreign operation is in place, Amazon MGM will become the first new major Hollywood studio in decades (the ability to release a title around the globe without assistance from a third-party is what separates a major from a mini-major, such as Lionsgate). On the other side of the aisle, Kevin Wilson — another veteran studio exec — heads up domestic distribution.

Hail Mary has been a boon in particular for the domestic box office, which was lagging badly earlier in the year, putting additional pressure on tried-and-true franchises to do all the work in making larger agins, such as The Super Mario Galaxy movie, which opened a few weeks after Hail Mary.

Comscore chief box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian says the film and rollout “will be viewed as a textbook example” of how to harness the power of both a legacy studio (MGM) and a modern streamer (Amazon), calling it “a blueprint on how to make these two seemingly opposing worlds be complementary.”

That’s not to say that every Amazon release has been a win at the box office. Earlier this year, both Mercy and Crime 101 underperformed.

Gosling was a hands-on creative leader and partner throughout the Hail Mary campaign, and observers note it worked because there was an inherent alignment between Gosling’s persona and the film itself. “His humor, intelligence, and understated charisma are embedded in the DNA of the film,” notes one rival studio executive.

Touted Kroll from the CinemaCon stage, “We’ve assembled a team with deep, legacy studio experience—many of whom you know well—leaders who have spent their careers launching films theatrically at the highest level. That expertise is now applied with a singular focus: not just releasing films, but championing each one with the care, rigor, and creativity it deserves.”

Read on for Hail Mary‘s marketing tactics, which included press tours to London, Paris and Mexico city, as well as press junkets at science-centric locations such as JPL and Griffith Observatory.

*Created shareable moments driven by Gosling, including his SNL hosting gig anda La La Landspoof. There was also the “Ryan Gosling Believes in the Hail Mary” viral video series also featured Gosling completing impossible Hail Marys including throwing a football through Randy’s Donuts sign in L.A. (over 10 million views) and nailing a Final Jeopardy question (50 million views)

*Gosling recorded a promotional video during the NFL NFC Championship game highlighting the concept of the Hail Mary in sports and life, and made the rounds on numerous talk shows. Movie themed stunts included celebrating an audience full of teachers; a Happy Birthday school band salute to his wife, Eva Mendes, and a Harry Styles’ surprise pop-up (the Styles song “Sign of the Times” is featured in the movie).

* Partnered with NASA, sports, faith and family, multicultural, and science/tech communities for screenings, and targeted multicultural engagement anchored by HBCU-focused programming with Spelman College’s speech & debate team.

*Integrations across the Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Game, and Winter Olympics, coordinated global light shows in Taipei, Toronto, and Berlin.

*Deployed creator initiatives including “Sun is Dying” hoax pranks, fan edit campaigns, and YouTube ads led by Cleo Abram; trailer fan edits and BookTok activations.