The first gay guy in space

… is the rock alien from Project Hail Mary

No one really wants to make an explicitly gay movie in space because sci-fi is expensive and queer media is niche. That’s not without some people trying: Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, an indie movie from 2011, was one director’s dogged attempt to hurtle some sapphic divas into the cosmos on a tight budget. That said: Gay people love space even if an openly gay person has never been to space. It makes sense we’ve colonized just about every other spot—we just need to find a planet with a bad dancefloor and a public bathroom. In the meantime, shall we just accept the new Ryan Gosling blockbuster, Project Hail Mary, as the closest thing we’re getting to gays in space? It is, I think, an interplanetary love story between two masc-coded kings.

Based on a best-selling novel by Andy Weir (who also wrote The Martian), Project Hail Mary arrived in cinemas around the world last week, becoming 2026’s first bonafide hit. It nearly matched the opening weekend of Oppenheimer—making $80.5 million this weekend, which is a rarity for a non-franchise film. In it, Gosling plays a molecular biologist-turned-school teacher named Ryland Grace. He’s enlisted by a group of researchers to solve the mystery of a microorganism that’s dimming the sun, threatening to wipe out life on earth entirely, because of a thesis paper he wrote years before that no one, at the time, really believed attention to.

It’s pretty standard sci-fi fare until they reach the surface of the one star in the solar system that’s not been ravaged by the microorganism, called Tau Ceti. There, he realizes he has company, and it comes in the form of an alien he calls Rocky: a five-legged, spider-like alien made of stone. The two learn to communicate and realize that—far away from their home planets—they have no one but each other. Thus starts a really beautiful kinship between them.

I know what you’re thinking. You think it’s problematic to see two guys queening out on a spaceship and automatically assume there’s something else going on when the cameras stop rolling. But we’d be foolish to ignore the signs. Initially, the only thing Rocky and Grace can really share is hand gestures (heard of voguing?). Then, thanks to Grace’s technological wizardry, he learns to translate Rocky’s echolocation into language, and they share stories from their pasts. From that point, the pair have a tear-jerking chemistry. You really get the sense that there’s something cute between them. Rocky doesn’t have a face, Gosling has the ultimate face. It’s a deep attraction, heightened further by the fact that the two can’t breathe the same air. What if they could? What might happen then?

This all happens in a film that stars Sandra Huller as one of the head honcho research people in charge of the earth-saving mission. We (gay people) know her best for doing that really iconic monologue in Anatomy of a Fall, which went viral on X several times during awards season (inherently gay). In Project Hail Mary, her standout moment comes when she delivers a profound karaoke (🏳️‍🌈) performance of “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles. That was Styles’ lead single from his self-titled album which, after Fine Line, might be the record that earned Styles the most queerbaiting accusations. Plus, Ryan Gosling’s character wears hot boy vintage tees for almost the entire film, one bearing the iconic insignia of the musical Cats. (👀) He looks good. But who is he dressing for if no one can see him? Could it be that gay little alien Rocky?

Back in 2023, as Saltburn slurped up all of the internet’s attention, I wrote an article that explored that core friendship between Barry Keoghan’s posh family interloper, Oliver Quick, and his aristocratic bestie, Jacob Elordi’s Felix Catton. I argued that, in between the layers of that tight-knit kinship, was a distinctly queer energy. Maybe it was the grave fucking (camp!) or Oliver sucking up the remnants of cum-laced bathwater, but it proved to me that there’s nothing more gay than straight male friendship.

That feels present here: An unrivalled, stop at nothing to be together closeness. But while Saltburn’s brotherhood had a lethal undertone, Project Hail Mary feels more like Call Me by Your Name to me: two people from different worlds who see each other, and have to face the idea of what it might be like to be apart because of what society demands of them. Ryan Gosling is Oliver and Rocky is the twink.