‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Kept the Answer to This Question a Mystery for Sequel Ideas | Video

“Project Hail Mary” didn’t land a $140.9 million global opening weekend without ratcheting some sci-fi excitement — and raising some questions.

Sitting with Wired, star and producer Ryan Gosling, directors Christopher Miller and Phil Lord and author Andy Weir answered the most-Googled questions about the film one week after its theatrical release. While most were answered at length and with easy transparency (“What star system is the Hail Mary sent to?” for instance), there was one that even Lord and Miller weren’t privy to.

“This one is one that I thought would actually get Googled a lot, which is, ‘What happens to the other two astronauts?’” Miller said, drawing a question during the web interview. “It’s a big question, and it’s a mystery in the book what happened to them. We don’t know.”

In the opening minutes of “Project Hail Mary,” Ryland Grace (Gosling) wakes up from a medically induced coma to find a pair of robotic hands operated by his ship’s AI assistant program probing him, undressing him and searching for signs of consciousness. As his memory slowly begins coming back to him, Ryland searches the ship for other crew mates.

Sadly, he finds the bunks of Yao (Ken Leung), the Chinese mission commander, and Olesya Ilyukhina (Milana Vayntrub) are occupied with their lifeless bodies.

Miller said that the only context he and Lord had to work off of was on the way, “each of them got sick and the robot was not able to fix it. But it never is fully explained.”

He then turned to Weir. “Do you have a secret answer?”

“So I know the answer to this, but I’m saving it for potential sequel materials,” the author teased.

“I can’t believe I never asked you that,” Miller admitted before Lord chimed in: “I did.” 

“But I’m keeping it secret for now,” Weir emphasized.

To see more of what the creatives behind “Project Hail Mary” had to say — like what the purpose of the Beetles bots are — watch the Wired video in full below:

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