I like dogs, gaming, & reading. I don't like jerks. / Chronouns: Cinnabar/🔴🔽 / pfp by @Stephannsel / header by @nieshiii / Be kind anyway. / @ADVANCEDgg
Andy Weir wrote a novel nobody wanted, posted it on his blog for free, then sold it on Kindle for 99 cents. It sold 35,000 copies in a month. This weekend, the movie based on his third book opened at $141 million worldwide.
Weir was a software engineer who started posting The Martian chapter by chapter on his website in 2009. Readers asked him to put it on Kindle. Within days of it hitting the bestseller list, he had a literary agent, a publishing deal, and Fox bought the film rights. The Martian cost $108 million to make and grossed $630 million. Drew Goddard wrote that screenplay. He wrote this one too.
Project Hail Mary cost nearly double at $200 million. And the studio behind it isn’t Fox. It’s Amazon MGM, which exists because Amazon wrote an $8.45 billion check to buy MGM in 2021. Four years and several expensive flops later, this is the first time that bet has looked smart.
Amazon MGM’s 2026 started ugly. A Melania documentary earned $16 million on a $40 million budget. Crime 101 managed $65 million worldwide against $90 million in production costs. Then Hail Mary opened to $80.5 million domestic, the second-largest non-franchise debut in a decade, behind only Oppenheimer’s $82.4 million.
Here’s what makes Amazon’s math viable: 200 million people pay for Amazon Prime, mostly for shipping. Prime Video is included. Every movie they put in theaters is a marketing campaign for a streaming service their customers already have. Their distribution chief said it in 2024: if they cover marketing costs theatrically, the movie pays for itself again on streaming. Traditional studios need a film to gross 2.5x its budget. Amazon just needs to cover the ad spend.
The film earned a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and an “A” CinemaScore (an audience exit poll that predicts how long a movie keeps selling tickets). If it tracks anything like The Martian, which had a similar audience profile and word of mouth, it could push past $600 million globally. Same screenwriter adapting both books, for a studio that didn’t exist when the first one came out.
According to our Kentucky Mesonet, Oldham County had a peak wind gust of 54.2 mph at 1:05 pm today.
We're expecting up to 75 mph straight-line winds this evening.
The worst feeling for a woman is when she tries to have a real conversation with a man about his behavior that hurts her, but instead of listening, he gets angry and turns it around on her. It cuts deep, a mix of frustration, sadness, and emotional abandonment. She isn’t trying
Someone I know stopped arguing in their relationship.
Not because things improved.
Because they realized the other person only changed temporarily when confronted.
So instead of fighting, they started observing.
Stopped reminding.
Stopped correcting.
Stopped asking twice.
Just