The reception to Project Hail Mary following its March 2026 release established that the right calls were made regarding what to keep and what to ditch from the source material in order to make it a suitable cinematic hit, but the film's popularity has in some ways only increased the fascination with what was cut from the movie in order to refine it into the final take that made it to cinemas.
Fans who are curious about this aspect of Project Hail Mary are set to have another interesting update on their hands soon, as several deleted scenes are about to be released alongside some new formats for the film, which presents a whole new way to learn about the movie and its extended footage.
Project Hail Mary Is Releasing Some Deleted Scenes With Its DVD
The news that Project Hail Mary's August 11 4K and Blu-ray DVD releases will contain a selection of bonus features including deleted scenes from the movie is naturally exciting, given both how much material the film's story had to play with, and given how much of the original book it had to shorten down or outright cut in order to condense the narrative down into a feature-length film's standard runtime.
These DVD releases are set to come complete with five deleted scenes, ensuring viewers get to see plenty of moments that were cut from the final film's runtime, and further encouraging those who are interested in the movie and curious about what its final cut could have looked like in an alternate universe wherein these scenes had remained a part of the story rather than having to be removed for whatever reason from the finished film to pick a physical copy up.
This also helps to further demonstrate the value of physical media in an age of streaming, as the bonus features the Project Hail Mary DVDs promise add all the more reason to collect a physical copy, and be able to get a truly fascinating look behind the proverbial curtain at the decisions that were made to craft the final cut of Project Hail Mary as we know it today.
As it stands, what we know of how much unused footage there is of Project Hail Mary certainly sets a promising precedent for the DVD's deleted scenes, since it's very clear that there are many minutes of deleted scenes that some behind-the-scenes looks into the movie can focus on.
During an interview with CinemaBlend, Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller revealed that there was "about half an hour of bits that didn't make the movie of Ryan just killing time in space", before joking about how the nature of these scenes meant they ostensibly needed to be cut. While this makes a lot of sense given the movie's time limits, this does mean there should be no shortage of footage to be shown as deleted scenes.
Similarly, in an interview with Happy, Sad, Confused, the duo mentioned that the original cut for Project Hail Mary was over double its final runtime, before it had to be reduced down immensely for a wide range of reasons, further solidifying the idea that there's plenty of footage for us to witness in this regard.
Given the striking popularity of Project Hail Mary ever since the film's release - which is still currently 2026's third highest-grossing movie (as per Box Office Mojo) - providing audiences with another way to see more about what the movie almost looked like seems a decidedly wise choice, and one that could reignite interest in the movie and its story once more.
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