“Project Hail Mary” is bringing audiences to movie theaters in numbers the industry hasn’t seen for a non-franchise film since “Oppenheimer.” The science fiction epic starring Ryan Gosling earned around $80.5 million in ticket sales in its first weekend playing in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday. Box office tracker EntTelligence estimates that translates into about 5 million ticket buyers.
Oppenheimer asked “just because we can build a nuclear bomb, should we?”, but they seemed to imply that the movie was original and edgy to consider that angle rather than it having been asked continuously for the past 80 years.