Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller say that the film’s Close Encounters Easter Egg was pitched by Steven Spielberg himself.
Warning: Mild spoilers for Project Hail Mary ahead!
“It was a pitch that Steven Spielberg pitched to us right before we left for London,” Lord explained on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast. “We were talking to him about the movie, and he’s like, ‘So the alien speaks in song… You should have [Ryan Gosling] do the Close Encounters theme. Wouldn’t that be funny? And we were like, ‘Well if you said, you said it, and I’m calling that a green light. Verbal contracts are binding.”
At one point in the movie, Gosling’s Ryland Grace meets Rocky (James Ortiz), an impossibly cute alien who becomes his buddy throughout the film. During that very first meeting, Grace hums the theme from Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi thriller Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s the perfect Easter egg for nerds (hi).
The film, based on The Martian author Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, follows Grace on a mission to save Earth after an alien microbe begins to slowly destroy the sun. Though reluctant to participate, he’s reassured that he’s the only mind in the world capable of solving the crisis and is sent light-years from home to investigate the only seemingly immune star. There, he meets the alien Rocky, who is also attempting to save his own home planet.
Project Hail Mary is in theaters now. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming movies of the year worth getting excited about.
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