Daniel Pemberton faced an unusual creative challenge when directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller pitched their vision for Project Hail Mary: score the entire two-and-a-half-hour film using only wood blocks. The composer loved the audacious spirit behind the idea, even as he gently explained why a single percussion instrument might not sustain Ryan Gosling's journey to save humanity from solar catastrophe.
That conversation captures something essential about how this particular creative partnership operates — and why it keeps producing results that feel genuinely fresh. Pemberton, who previously scored Lord and Miller's Spider-Verse films and Apple TV+ series The Afterparty, found himself diving deeper into the filmmaking process than ever before for Project Hail Mary.
"I got involved quite early, reading the script and writing ideas that got played on set with Ryan," Pemberton told The Hollywood Reporter. The composer relocated to Los Angeles, writing beside the editing suite as the directors refined their cut through countless revisions.
The wood block concept evolved into something far more ambitious: an entirely unconventional orchestra built around organic, water-based sounds that would mirror the improvisational spirit of Gosling's character, Ryland Grace. Where traditional space films might lean into synthesizers and electronic manipulation, Project Hail Mary's score emerges from playground percussion and glass instruments.
"We recruited a bunch of school kids to Abbey Road Studios and recorded them clapping, stamping their feet, slapping things," Pemberton explained. "Making the score feel very organic through the prism of space meant finding ways to connect the audience to the Earth and to humanity."
Communication drives both the film's narrative and its musical language. When Grace encounters Rocky, his alien collaborator voiced and puppeteered by James Ortiz, the score introduces new vocal textures that bridge their different worlds.
"We did a lot of experimentation early on with vocals and vocal ideas," Pemberton said. "I would merge synthetic voices with real voices. I wanted something that connected Ryland and Rocky. Because Rocky is from this other planet and his communication is different, I wanted a sound world that subconsciously would connect you to this otherworldly being."
The film's most intense sequence — what Pemberton calls the "fishing trip" — demonstrates this approach in its purest form. The eight-minute cue begins with a single wood block, the directors' original concept, then builds relentlessly without ever providing emotional release.
"That cue has every single musical idea I put in this film," Pemberton noted. "It's got kids' percussion, it's got electric cello, it's got cristal baschet, it's got glass harmonica, it's got orchestra, it's got millions of weird bits of percussion. This score has everything."
Project Hail Mary represents familiar territory in some ways — Andy Weir's rigorously researched science fiction, following his debut novel The Martian, which Ridley Scott adapted in 2015 with Matt Damon to massive success. But where The Martian split its tension between a stranded astronaut and his Earth-based rescue team, this adaptation turns the structure inward, with Grace's returning memory serving as mission control.
The film follows Grace from his pre-mission life as a science teacher warning students about a solar drainage crisis, to awakening aboard a spacecraft light-years from Earth with no memory of how he arrived. Sandra Hüller co-stars as Eva Stratt, the international project director responsible for putting Grace on his mission.
For Pemberton, the scoring challenge went beyond finding the right sounds — it meant creating a musical language that could evolve alongside Grace's character development.
"Ryland changes through the movie," he explained. "When Rocky starts to arrive, that element of the score also arrives. So Rocky, in the same way that he brings his own personality and outlook into the story, also brings a different sonic outlook and melodic outlook."
- Pemberton calls this "the most challenging, most complicated score" of his career
- The composer spent extensive time writing next to the editing room in Los Angeles
- Every sequence in the film underwent multiple revisions during the scoring process
- Experiments included steel drums and electronic voice manipulation
The collaboration between Pemberton and the directors extended to moments of pure cinematic spectacle. When Grace activates the Astrophage collector during a spacewalk, Pemberton fought for the sequence's musical potential.
"He presses the button and then he goes into the stars with all the red. I thought it was such a beautiful visual sequence," Pemberton recalled. "I was like, 'You've got to let me do something for that, because this is going to be a very powerful, cinematic IMAX moment.'"
The emotional core of the score reveals itself in quieter moments, particularly when Grace discovers his mission might not be the one-way trip he expected. "When I'm scoring a movie, if there's an option to try and make people cry, I zero in on that moment and spend so much time trying to work out how to get it to the most effective that it can be," Pemberton said.
From wood blocks to kitchen sinks, Project Hail Mary's score embodies the same resourceful creativity that defines its protagonist's approach to saving the world — making it up as you go along, but making it count.