Lego is making a Project Hail Mary Set
Based on the movie based on Andy Weir's novel
Well, this is cool: Lego announced last week that it's making a set that ties in with the upcoming film Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir's novel. This is a kit that's part of Lego's Icons lineup, which is comprised of sets that are aimed at older collectors and which are a bit more complicated to build. As such, this'll be a sort of scaled-down version of the spaceship from the novel, along with a display stand. It's due to be released on March 1st, and retails for $100.
Ever since it began releasing Star Wars sets, Lego has increasingly been focusing on movie tie-ins sets, but I'm trying to think of a time where we've seen something like this: a set that doesn't really come from an established franchise, and for a story that's mainly known for the novel, given that the film isn't out until March 20th.
I enjoyed Project Hail Mary when I read it last year after an abortive attempt when it first came out. It follows a scientist who wakes up on a spaceship far from Earth. His two fellow crew members died in hibernation, and he initially can't remember who he is or what he's doing. As his memory comes back, we learn that Earth's sun has been dimming because of a contagion from an alien life form, and he's been dispatched to a system in hopes that he can find a way to stop that from happening.
Andrew Liptak
While this doesn't initially feel like the sort of thing that Lego would release a set for, it does when you think back to some of the company's iconic toy lines: Lego Space.
In 2023, Lego released LEGO Space: 1978 - 1992, an exhaustive overview of the company's various science fiction toys. It's a cool book to flip through, especially if you grew up alongside these particular toys. In its prologue, author Tim Johnson explains that Lego was developing as a company in the midst of the global space race, and that the prospect of going to space and visiting other worlds was fresh in people's minds, which helped push the company to develop the lineup, which evolved over time into this distinct identity with a whole bunch of specific themes – the classic lineup was followed by the Futuron and Blacktron sets in the late 1980s, then Space Police, M:Tron, Blacktron: Future Generation in the early 1990s, and then the Spyrius, Ice Planet 2002, Unitron, Exploriens, Roboforce, UFO, and Insectoids.
With the rise and focus on its various tie-in products in the early 2000s, it feels like Lego has really turned away from some of the original IP that it was known for in the 1980s and 1990s – lineups like the Aquazone, Space, Town, and Castle. They haven't vanished entirely – the company did release a revised Space Police and Alien Conquest in 2011, and Galaxy Squad in 2013 – but its focus on space has veered away from the science fictional and into the realm of more realistic depictions, like space shuttles, space stations, or Mars missions, only turning to those classic toys when they're catering to the older adult fans through advanced kits like the Blacktron Renegade.
This particular kit feels a little like a bridge between the two – something that is purely science fictional, but with an element of the harder science fiction realism that Weir is known for. I doubt that this kit will kick off an other lineup of Lego's classic space era, but wouldn't it be cool if it did? Looking over those older kits, there's something about them them that I feel like most of the original and tie-in sets are really lacking – this sense of zany exploration and colorful fun that came in the form of the array of yellow / green / blue / red / orange transparent windows, specialized equipment, space suits, and so forth. Real space is certainly cool – and a Lego designer once told me about how he was struck at how influential the company's toys were when he visited NASA – but it's just never really felt like it has the same charm.
This is a much broader issue for the genre – the harder science fiction stories of the 1970s and 1980s has been widely outstripped by fantasy and cozier genres in recent years, and while there are some excellent books out there playing in the space, they're fewer and further between to the point where a toy like this stands out to me.
There's certainly a lot of attention being directed towards the upcoming Project Hail Mary film – MGM dropped a big, final trailer for it during last weekend's Super Bowl, which is as good an indication in their confidence that it'll be a hit – and hopefully, the upcoming Artemis II mission will provide some inspiration for creators and readers to dig into it a bit more. In any case, it's a neat reminder and quasi-throwback to the company's influential lineup.