Ryan Gosling’s New Epic Sci-Fi Sets All-Time Career Rotten Tomatoes Audience Record, Finally Beating His 26-Year-Old Classic

2026’s Project Hail Mary, which was directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, is an adaptation of the 2021 novel of the same name by Andy Weir, the author of The Martian. It follows middle school science teacher and disgraced molecular biologist Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) bonding with an alien entity while trying to stop a strange substance from killing the sun and thus destroying humanity.

Although the movie doesn’t open wide until March 20, early screenings of Project Hail Mary have already led to a flood of more than 1,000 verified audience reviews that have allowed Rotten Tomatoes to give the movie an official Popcornmeter score. While the score could fluctuate as more reviews are added, at the time of writing, it has earned a near-perfect 98%.

This marks the best Popcornmeter score for any Ryan Gosling movie in history. His previous high was 2000’s Remember the Titans (93%), which it has beaten by five full points, allowing it some wiggle room to maintain its record even if its score dips slightly after its opening weekend.

This Popcornmeter record comes just one week after the movie broke the same record on the Tomatometer. Critics’ Project Hail Mary reviews earned the movie a Certified Fresh 95% Tomatometer score that beat out 2011’s Drive (93%) as Ryan Gosling’s best-ever score from critics.

This stellar Popcornmeter score is bolstered by the fact that audience members’ individual scores are also glowing. While the movie would still have earned a record-breaking score if 98% of reviews had given it lukewarm but positive scores of 3 out of 5, this is not the case. Almost every score it has earned so far is between 4 and 5 out of 5.

It ultimately remains to be seen if this early audience enthusiasm results in Project Hail Mary becoming a box office hit. Per Box Office Theory, the movie’s projections as of March 13 were already reasonably strong for an untested IP.

Its projected domestic debut between $50 and $65 million already had a chance of beating Scream 7‘s $63.6 million opening weekend to earn the best domestic debut of 2026 so far. However, if these reviews lead to strong word-of-mouth growth, it could potentially blast past that original range.

This could be a very promising sign, as Project Hail Mary reportedly cost about $200 million to make, which could place its estimated theatrical break-even point as high as a whopping $450 million, so it needs a strong start to get the ball rolling.