New Sci-Fi Hit Officially Overtakes M. Night Shyamalan’s Alien Thriller at the Box Office With Major Milestone

After just 20 days in theaters, the critically acclaimed new sci-fi film Project Hail Mary has taken down several sci-fi hits from the past at the box office. It recently overtook the domestic hauls of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Ridley Scott's The Martian — movies with which it shares storytelling and thematic DNA. It has now passed another sci-fi hit from an A-list filmmaker. The movie in question was released nearly 25 years ago, after the filmmaker had been hailed by the press as the successor to Steven Spielberg. Project Hail Mary owes a huge creative debt to Spielberg's sci-fi films as well, particularly for the core relationship between the protagonist and an alien at its center. The movie follows a schoolteacher who is sent on an intergalactic mission to save the world. During the mission, he forms a bond with an alien on a similar quest.