Apr 01, 2026 7:59pm IST
‘Project Hail Mary’ Producer Aditya Sood: On Ryan Gosling Visiting India, Moving for ‘Dhurandhar 2’ and Personal Easter Eggs Hidden In The Film (EXCLUSIVE)
The conversation around “Project Hail Mary” in India is no longer just about the film’s scale, emotional ending, or the fan push for premium screens. It is also now about whether Ryan Gosling can finally make his long-awaited India trip happen. Going by what co-producer Aditya Sood has to say, that possibility is very much alive.
Speaking exclusively to Variety India, Sood revealed that Gosling has often spoken about wanting to visit India and would be more than open to it if the opportunity came together. “I know Ryan has said multiple times that he's always wanted to come to India,” Sood said. “So, I'm sure he would love the opportunity to come.”
Talking about the response to the film’s IMAX rollout in India, Sood admitted he was genuinely stunned by how aggressively audiences pushed for the format. “It's incredible,” he said, recalling how he first began hearing about the demand while in India attending a family wedding in Delhi. “And then someone sent me a link to a 3:45 AM screening that was sold out. I was blown away.”
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He added, “We make these movies with so much passion. And again, all we can do is just try to make the best film we can. But then to see it getting met with the same passion from people who hadn't even seen the film, I mean, it's really humbling.” He also thanked fans directly for campaigning hard to get IMAX screens for the film.
Sood also addressed the film’s delayed release in India, which had sparked curiosity given the box-office traffic around local big-ticket films. According to him, the decision to push the film by a week came after a strong recommendation from Sony Pictures Releasing International, which felt the local release calendar demanded a more strategic window.
“Look, obviously, we were in the process of finishing our film,” he said. “We have an incredible team here with Sony India that obviously knows the Indian market really, really well. They alerted us to tell us that they thought it would make more sense to wait a week for it to be released. So, of course, we trusted them. And I think it was a really smart decision.”
“The thing for us is we want people to go to the movies,” he added. “And we want as many movies to be hits and successful as possible; get people in the habit of going to the theater and seeing these movies on the biggest screen possible. And you saw it with ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer.’ You can have two giant movies at the same time. And actually, they help each other. So, we felt the same way about ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge.’”
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Beyond release strategy and fan frenzy, one of the most moving parts of Sood’s interaction was how he spoke about his own family and how unexpectedly they became part of the film’s fabric. During a conversation with production designer Charles Wood, Sood apparently spoke about growing up in a family of doctors—a detail that quietly shaped parts of the movie’s world-building.
“I remember Charles and I were having a conversation about our childhoods,” he said. “And I mentioned that pretty much everyone in my family is a doctor. I think I have like 65 doctors in my family, including my father and mother, who are both doctors.”
He added that even his grandmother had a remarkable medical history. “In fact, my grandmother was one of the first women doctors in India, in the world. She went to medical school, I think, in 1929.” That family legacy then found its way into the film in deeply personal ways. Sood revealed that one day on set, he discovered that the medical bay in the film was imagined as being built by an Indian company. Even more touching, the fictional company was named after his mother and grandmother.
“And I came to set one day, and Charles had decided that the medical bay would be built by India,” he said. “And in fact, he had made a little sign for the company that manufactured the medical equipment, named Rekha Shanti. Rekha is my mom's name and Shanti was my grandmother's name.”
The tributes did not stop there. Sood shared that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller also wrote both of his parents into the film in different forms. “In fact, Chris and Phil wrote both of my parents into the movie,” he said. “And so, the little girl who asks, ‘What's the Petrova line?’ at the beginning, her name's Rekha. And Aaron Neal plays a scientist who is involved with building the first spin drive.”
“And it's also a very cute story,” he continued. “They named him Narender, which is my father's name.” Even when the team had to trim the film for pacing, they found a way to preserve that emotional detail. Sood recalled that his father’s name had to be removed from a spoken moment because of runtime concerns, but the filmmakers quietly reinserted it in a more visual, and arguably more touching, way.
“And then as we were getting close to finishing the movie, we had to make little trims just to get the movie to the perfect length,” he said. “And they had to cut his name out of the film, because that’s just the way the scene worked.”
What happened next, he said, was a complete surprise. “And they didn't tell me. They surprised me with this. All of a sudden, I'm watching a cut of the movie, and I see that there's a little badge on Aaron's shirt that says Dr. N. Sood. It's for my dad.”
He added that the shot ended up carrying even more emotional value because of what it represented behind the scenes. “And it turns out it was actually the very last visual effect that they got through the system. While we were finishing the movie, they went to Paul Lambert, the head of our brilliant visual effects supervisor, and they said, 'We need to get this one shot. He's like, 'I can't get it.' And then they explained what it was. He's like, ‘I'll get it done.’ And so that was the last shot in the film.”
"Project Hail Mary" is playing to packed theatres worldwide.
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