How Project Hail Mary Editor Joel Negron Brought Rocky the Alien to Life

Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller had a director’s cut of the film that ran four hours while Ryan Gosling’s alien co-star was built frame by frame, Gold Derby reported.

The adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel centres on astronaut Ryland Grace and Rocky, an extraterrestrial engineer with five limbs and no face. Creature maker Neal Scanlan and actor-puppeteer James Ortiz brought the alien to life on set, but editor Joel Negron crafted much of Rocky’s breakout performance in post-production. Negron spent years on effects-heavy films including Thor: Ragnarok and Jungle Cruise before taking on the project.

“The whole movie was the hardest scene,” Negron told Gold Derby. “This is the hardest movie I’ve ever worked on. There was so much footage, there was so much emotion to try and convey.”

Production yielded 700 hours of film, with takes frequently running for 40 minutes as Gosling and Ortiz improvised. Negron joined the production two weeks late while finishing another film, leaving him to sort through a massive pile of accumulated material.

His initial assembly ran past the four-hour mark. Lord warned test audiences before screenings that the cut was lengthy and granted permission to leave for the restroom, though viewers reportedly remained in their seats throughout.

Because Rocky lacks eyes, a mouth, or facial expressions, Negron relied entirely on body language and physical movements to establish the character’s reactions. He searched through hours of puppetry footage for subtle shifts, such as a shoulder shrug or a forward lean.

“When he says no, he doesn’t want to do it, I found a piece where it looks like Rocky’s shrugging his shoulder, like, ‘Oh, man, come on,'” Negron told Gold Derby. “And then when he was anticipating him doing it, I found a piece where he was leaning forward.”

Composer Daniel Pemberton scored the film alongside the editing process, frequently working out of a suite adjacent to the cutting room. In high-stakes dramatic sequences, such as a scene where Rocky saves Grace while the spaceship breaks apart, the filmmakers dropped all music and sound effects entirely.

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