It wasn't a great start to the year for sci-fi films until Project Hail Mary came along and shattered expectations. Before Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's blockbuster, which has grossed more than $500 million worldwide so far, two sci-fi movies came and went without making much of an impact in theaters. Neither of those two films was able to recoup its budget, and only one of them received positive reviews.

The other was Mercy, starring Chris Prattas a Los Angeles cop accused of murdering his wife, and Rebecca Ferguson as the AI-powered judge assigned to his case. The movie holds a 25% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes and grossed only around $55 million against a reported budget of $60 million.