2026’s Most Anticipated Sci-fi Movie May Also Be One of Its Longest (It Set a Record for the Star)

Update: Amazon MGM Studios has confirmed the actual run time to ComicBook, which has been added below.

Extended runtimes for movies are nothing new, but we’ve also gotten to a point where film fans have begun to expect sitting in their seats for quite a while when they get to the theater. Avatar: Fire and Ash just proved that movie fans were willing to sit for more than three and a half hours when you factor in the pre-show trailers, and Marvel fans are already speculating on the length of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, even though the MCU’s next movie isn’t even finished filming (and that’s not counting chatter about Secret Wars, a movie that isn’t even ready to begin production).

2026 has even more movies waiting in the wings that will almost certainly have runtimes that rival an American football game, with speculation about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Dune Part Three appearing as likely candidates. One movie has emerged, though, as potentially one of the longest of the year, with the Ryan Gosling-starring Project Hail Mary already making fans ponder if they’ll spring for the large soda when the film premieres this March.

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Project Hail Mary’s Runtime Revealed (And It’s Long)

Listings for Project Hail Mary at a local movie theater, Yosemite Cinema, have popped up online and appear to indicate that the adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel is going to be a long one. Though unconfirmed by the studio, the site lists Project Hail Mary as being 2 hours and 46 minutes long, however, Amazon MGM Studios has confirmed the actual runtime is 2 hours and 36 minutes. This makes the film the second-longest of Ryan Gosling’s career (just eight minutes shorter than Blade Runner 2049‘s 2 hours and 44 minutes) and the longest of directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (‘s 22 Jump Street at 1 hour and 52 minutes).

For fans of Weir’s other work that has made it to the big screen, Project Hail Mary is also 15 minutes longer than 2016’s The Martian. Longtime readers may not be surprised by this, as the pagecount for Project Hail Mary as a book is much longer than The Martian by well over 100 pages. As a result, it makes sense that there would be more to bring to life. As readers will also know, Project Hail Mary has a distinct storytelling structure and a surprise character up its sleeve that gives the film a lot of meat on its bones. All that to say, no one should really be surprised that the new movie is as long as it is,

It remains to be seen how Project Hail Mary will do at the box office upon its arrival but the film has a lot working in its favor. Gosling remains a major box office draw, and Lord & Miller as a team have largely been unbeatable. The pair often get attached to projects that seem to be dead on arrival, only to turn into something as transformative as the Jump Street reboots and The LEGO Movie (not to mention the ace up their sleeve in being the producers of the Spider-Verse films). Hailing from the author of The Martian is also something that could give this one a lot of goodwill with audiences. Assuming the reviews are also positive, learning they’ll be getting a lot of movie for their money also seems to be a positive in its corner.