The science fiction film Project Hail Mary has certainly become a topic of discussion in pop culture. With a budget of $200 million, the film starring Ryan Gosling grossed nearly $685 million at the box office and is now available on home video. Meanwhile, Andy Weir, author of the original science fiction novel of the same name about Ryland Grace and Rocky, is already working on a new project.

Exoplanet is a science-fiction thriller that is sure to appeal to fans of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse and Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter. The Exoplanet audiobook will be released on Audible, and Andy Weir, who also wrote the novel The Martian, is the project’s executive producer. But an entire all-star team is working on it.

Andy Weir

For example, the screenplay for Exoplanet was written by Benjamin Percy, who has worked on superhero series for Marvel and DC. The cast also includes Anthony Mackie, whom you may know for his roles as Falcon and Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, and John Leguizamo, who played Eumaios in Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey. In addition, Oscar-winning American actress Ariana DeBose has joined the project.

Exoplanet

“When the starship Wild Blue Yonder is torn apart by a quantum anomaly, each surviving crew member crash-lands in a different era on the same deadly exoplanet – hunted, alone, and running out of time,” reads the official Exoplanet synopsis. “Chief Engineer Jeff Shaw (Anthony Mackie), aided by his virtual assistant (Ray Porter), must battle an unforgiving present, driven by one thing: getting home to his daughter. First Officer Becca Bang (Ariana DeBose) fights to survive a hostile alien past. Science Officer Logan Bowers (John Leguizamo) wakes in a machine-ruled future that shouldn’t exist.”

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But it seems this anomaly isn’t quite a coincidence. “A relentless alien intelligence is feeding on human technology – and it’s been waiting for them across every timeline. Separated by centuries, the crew must find a way to communicate across time itself before this world consumes them all.” Now that’s a plot twist!

Andy Weir said he’s fascinated by the new story. “I’m obsessed with problems, the kind where one person and a lot of math are all that stand between survival and disaster. Benjamin Percy’s writing in Exoplanet takes that and adds a twist that genuinely kept me up at night: what if the people trying to save each other were separated not by distance, but by centuries? You can’t see that story. You have to hear it,” he said. “The crackle across a five-hundred-year gap, the desperation in a voice that doesn’t know if anyone’s still listening. Anthony, Ariana, and John don’t just perform it; they make you feel every impossible mile between them.”

Exoplanet