Andy Weir tried to cut Project Hail Mary’s two best scenes — the directors flat-out refused

If you thought writers are precious about their work on set, spare a glance at Andy Weir during the making of Project Hail Mary. You'd imagine the man who created the story would be fiercely defending every last scene. Oddly enough, it was quite the opposite — he kept trying to chop out some of the movie’s most striking moments. And it took the directors, Lord and Miller, to pull him back from the brink (twice) and, frankly, ignore him. Weir has been pretty open about it, so let's walk through what actually happened behind the scenes.

Project Hail Mary ended up trimmed to 2 hours and 36 minutes after an epic four-hour first cut.

The Edits That Weren't

Weir, apparently on something of a self-editing spree, wanted to cut not one but two of what have since become fan-favourite scenes. The first? That visually bonkers spacewalk, with Ryan Gosling's Ryland Grace floating through the Petrova Line as pink dust glows around him and the music swells. To most of us: space opera magic. To Weir: a bit of pointless eye-candy. He found it redundant plot-wise, asking the directors to lose it entirely — and even flagged a science nitpick, since Grace can’t see in infrared, so (in his words) ‘this doesn’t even make sense. This is dumb. We should get rid of it.’

Yet Chris Lord and Phil Miller were having none of it. They left the whole thing in, shooting a lot of it practically using real infrared lights, which landed with audiences. Weir had to admit afterwards, everyone loved what he wanted to ditch.

Karaoke and Character

The next bit Weir tried to bin was a fresh addition: Sandra Hüller's Eva Stratt gets a late-in-the-game karaoke scene, which somehow sums up her guilt over sending someone off, alone, on a near-suicidal mission. Weir’s take? It ran too long and was ‘wrong for her character’. The directors, testing the patience of anyone who's ever argued about a final cut, just replied, ‘Hell no, we’re not cutting it. This is awesome.’ Cue test audiences apparently vibing with it too, so Weir lost that vote as well.

• Both the spacewalk and the karaoke scene were nearly axed at Weir's request
• Directors Lord and Miller overruled him, and both scenes survived the final cut
• Test audiences and general viewers ended up loving the moments Weir wanted gone

To be fair, Weir knows his limitations. He admitted he wanted to scrap the original cover art for The Martian, thinking it underwhelming — before it went and won awards. His summary after this experience was unusually blunt, even for him. Here’s how he put it for /Film:

What I’ve learned from the process of ‘PHM’ is that I belong writing novels and I should never be a director. Because there were scenes in the movie that I argued we should cut that are people’s favourite scenes.

In short: turns out the creator of Project Hail Mary was this close to deleting the brightest bits of his own adaptation. Probably a lesson for over-involved authors everywhere, if they’re paying attention.