Aditya Sood, producer of Ryan Gosling-starrer Project Hail Mary, spoke to us about how life took him from watching pirated VHS tapes to taking the punt on the biggest movie Hollywood has made in 2026
In Project Hail Mary, science teacher Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship with no recollection of who he is or how he got there
There’s a very specific kind of frenzy that only a big-screen spectacle can create in India. Think when Dhurandhar: The Revenge found itself sold out in paid preview shows. That’s what happened to Project Hail Mary. IMAX shows sold out days in advance, with 3 am screenings filling up after excited cinephiles waged a war to ensure the film releases in IMAX widely.
When we tell Aditya Sood this — that people have been trying for days to get tickets — he is both amused and moved. He says, “Obviously, you want to see passion. We’re so passionate about making the films. So to see that being met with passion from people who want to see the film… it should be seen on the biggest screen possible.”
There’s something telling in that response. Because if there’s one thread that runs through Sood’s journey, from a kid watching pirated VHS tapes in Seattle to producing one of the biggest sci-fi films of the decade, is that of faith in the big screen experience.
Ryan Gosling. Pic/Getty Images
Project Hail Mary arrives with something almost unfashionable in the current climate — hope. “We like to say we want to make movies that are at least 51 per cent optimistic… We understand that the world is complicated. We don’t want to be over the top or saccharine. There’s real struggle out there. But we really want people to come out of the theatre feeling better than when they came in.” He credits directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller with sharpening that idea further. “They feel their mission as filmmakers is to show models of goodness in the world. And I think there’s no better mission than that.”
For Indian audiences, where the idea of a “producer” often collapses into financier, studio head, or even auteur, Sood’s role can feel elusive. He laughs about this, particularly when explaining his job to extended family. “Producer can mean a lot of different things. I’ll tell you about what I do… I really do what’s called creative producing. You start from the very beginning — finding an idea, a book, a script.
Aditya Sood
You work with the writer, develop it, then put it together with the director, actors, all the creative talent. I’m not writing the cheque, the studio is, but my job is to protect the creative vision and do it in a fiscally responsible way. Someone once told me: be the most business-minded person on the creative team or the most creative-minded person on the business team. If you can translate between those two worlds, there will always be a job for you.”
If audiences are only now going to watch Project Hail Mary, Sood has been living with it for six years. “Anytime you get that feeling where you can’t put something down, you must know there is something powerful in there worth going forward with. I started reading the book at noon and finished at 8 pm. You know there’s something special. It can take years and years and a lot of missteps… but if you don’t believe in it, it’s never going to happen. The only thing you really have is your own point of view and the courage of your conviction.”
For all its scale, Project Hail Mary carries small, deeply personal imprints — Easter eggs that quietly tether a global story to one man’s history. Sood shares one of them with particular affection. “We were figuring out which country built which module of the ship… and I said, the medical module should be from India. My mother is a doctor. My grandmother was one of the first female doctors in India, she graduated in 1929. Our production designer surprised me with a plaque. The company that built the medical robot was ‘Rekashanti’ — my mom and grandmother’s names.”
Born in England, raised in Seattle, in a time before global connectivity, cinema became a bridge back to India. “I come from a family of doctors. So there was no connection to cinema except how it kept us tied to India. We probably had the first VCR on the block. We didn’t have a dining table, but we had that. I watched Star Wars three times a day for an entire summer. And something unlocked.”
Before we leave, he tells us his life has come full circle on this film. When we ask about his favourite memory from the making of Project Hail Mary, the scale of it all quietly slips away. He talks about his son visiting the set in London. The moment he remembers is a small one. His son, who had grown up around space stories, born the year The Martian (2015) released, walked onto the set, looked around, pointed at a window and said, that’s the cupola. “It’s part of the International Space Station,” Sood recalls him saying, “That’s when I felt like, okay, we’ve done our job.”
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