Seeking answers to save their respective worlds, a human and an alien develop an unlikely bond in Directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller’s sci-fi epic, Project Hail Mary.

The tells the story of disgraced scientist-turned middle school science teacher, Ryland Grace, who wakes up on a spaceship with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory slowly returns, he discovers he is part of a desperate mission to stop a mysterious substance killing Earth’s sun. While in deep space, he encounters “Rocky” an alien on a similar mission and the friendship they form may be the key to their mutual success.

On April 19, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Lord & Miller discussed the making of Project Hail Mary during a Q&A moderated by Director Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein).

Following their long-held philosophy that a film needs to be about a relationship, Lord and Miller detailed why they opted for as much a practical approach as possible to bring to life the rocklike alien, “Rocky.”

“We knew that 'Rocky' was #2 on the call sheet. The relationship between Ryan (Gosling) and 'Rocky' was going to make or break the movie and that Ryan would really need a scene partner even though it was going to be incredibly complicated. Sometimes the shots in between didn't get the right expression and so we have puppet close-up, then cut to Ryan, cut back to the CG close-up and then back to a puppet,” said Miller.

“So Rocky winds up being made by sculptors working in clay and digital sculptors working in ZBrush and real painters touching him up all the time. But it maximizes the human touch, so you have as many human artists touching them frame as possible. A production's job is not to capture efficiency it's to capture value. And the value of a movie is how many souls put their hearts into it,” explained Lord.  

“The magic trick of this is, this is a rock crab thing with no face and no eyes and no mouth and he has to be so expressive that you fall in love with him and go, ‘I would die for that rock!’” added Miller.

Lord & Miller’s other directorial credits include the feature films 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street; the animated features The Lego Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; the pilot for the series Brooklyn Nine-Nine; and episodes of the series The Last Man on Earth. Miller has also directed episodes of the series The Afterparty. Both have been DGA members since 2011 and Lord currently serves as a member of the DGA National Board and has served as an Alternate on the Western Directors Council.