There has been much discourse on the internet about the lack of IMAX screens for Ryan Gosling's film Project Hail Mary due to the box office dominance of Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar: The Revenge, starring Ranveer Singh. The Hindi film has been breaking one record after another, despite its recent release and its runtime touching four hours. Speaking of which, Project Hail Mary's directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller showed a version of the film with around four hours of runtime to other directors.
Speaking on the podcast Happy Sad Confused, Miller stated, "This movie was massive. When we finally got the assembly cut down to under four hours long, we subjected some filmmaker friends of ours to a three hour and 45 minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing." On the other hand, Lord revealed that they both received the same feedback from their filmmaker friends: Reduce the runtime.
Respecting the feedback, the film's directors cut it short to about two and a half hours. "We thought everything was charming, but some of those charming things didn’t land," Lord admitted while explaining the logic behind the move.
An adaptation of Andy Weir’s eponymous novel, Project Hail Mary stars Ryan Gosling as a science teacher who becomes an astronaut and who goes on a mission to keep Earth from extinction. His sole companion in the space mission for a large part is an alien named Rocky. The film has had a bumper opening at the global box office, having grossed more than $100 million.
According to multiple reports, the film's IMAX release plans faced some pushback in India from Dhurandhar: The Revenge producer Jio Studios, but fan pressure eventually ensured its broader IMAX release.
