The yearâs first blockbuster movie also spawned a hit sweater.
Could it be the most famous cardigan since Mr. Rogersâs? The hit Ryan Gosling movie âProject Hail Maryâ has fans craving the cozy zip-up emblazoned with foxes that his science-teacher hero wears on a mission to save Earth.
But thereâs a snag to obtaining this sweater. Goslingâs costume was handmade, customized from a mail-order pattern from the 1950s. If you want one, you have to knit it yourself.
That challenge has crafty fans of the film racing to source yarn and patterns, and share their progress on a DIY project that can take weeks or longer to complete.
Jaclyn Ziegler, a knitting and crochet creator in Phoenix who posts under the name Purls & Top Knots, got going on her âHail Maryâ project before even watching the movie because âthe sweater was just everywhere.â She has since seen the film twice, including from the third row of a packed IMAX theater, where the huge screen helped her count stitches in the fox tail on Goslingâs costume. She typed the specsââsix stitches across, six rows downââinto her phone when the credits rolled.
On Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, Ziegler shared her yarn-sourcing trips to Michaels and Hobby Lobby, and tested her stitch spacing in a âgauge swatch.â Guys bombarded her with requests to buy the sweater when she was done, including one who commented with his size (âbetween XL and XXLâ). She explained that the cost would be absurd for a project she expects to spend three weeks on.
âIâve even had a few people say theyâve asked their wives to make one for them,â says Ziegler, who has completed one sleeve and a partial front panel on the one sheâs making for herself.
The company behind the original sweater design, Mary Maxim, a fourth-generation, family-owned knitting and crochet supply company with about 100 employees, has scrambled to fill more than a thousand orders for its new âProject Hail Maryâ knitting kit.
With the movie entering its third week as Hollywoodâs top-grossing release of the year, the aura around Goslingâs knitwear even has some people picking up needles for the first time.
In Des Moines, Iowa, Nicole Nayima is expecting about 20 participants in her Black Sheep Craft Shopâs first âknit along,â which will have the group toiling through their ââHail Maryâ projectsâProjectâ pieces together starting next week. Three of her sign-ups are new to knitting. âWeâre going to get them through it,â says Nayima, a corporate attorney by day who once knitted her brother a âDudeâ sweater like the one in âThe Big Lebowski.â
Celebrity knitter Tom Daley helped fuel the sweater buzz. Heâs a former diver with five Olympic medals whose calm-down ritual of knitting helped jump-start his âMade With Loveâ craft and clothing company. He whipped up a version of Goslingâs costume as a paid promotion for the film.
Daley posted a minute-long video documenting a process that actually took him 30 hours to complete with âa super chunky merino wool blend yarn and 10 mm needles,â he says in an email, noting that he did it without an official pattern. âI just had to look at some pretty basic screenshots from early scenes from the movie to try and figure out how it was made.â
For the proudly nerdy subculture of crafting, itâs a spotlight moment that lines up with the themes of âProject Hail Mary.â In the adaptation of a sci-fi novel by âThe Martianâ writer Andy Weir, Goslingâs reluctant hero is a maker, using science, hacks and the help of an alien made of rocks to defeat space microbes that are devouring stars, including Earthâs sun.
The characterâs now-famous sweater barely made it into the film.
During a costume fitting for Gosling, the star (a sometimes knitter himself) spotted a vintage Canadian curling-style sweater that costume designer Glyn Dillon had bought at a London clothing fair. Its creamy drape would help connect Goslingâs solo astronaut to the life he left on Earth, âalmost like a comfort blanket,â says the filmâs other costume designer, David Crossman.
But the piece, made from a pattern that the Mary Maxim company has sold for 70 years, had a pair of snarling gray wolves on the front with blood-red footprints, which the film team deemed too ferocious for Goslingâs goofy hero.
Dillon redesigned the wolves into cute red foxes, but had just days before filming began to make the new cardigan and backup duplicates. âTwo things that just donât go well together: knitting and high pressure,â he says.
The costume heads called on some pro knitters who got the job done. Crossman declined to be more specific about these ringers, saying, âTheyâre very closely guarded secrets.â
(Mitch McPhedrain, owner of Mary Maxim, poses as the sweaterâs model on the companyâs web store.)
Mary Maxim owner Mitch McPhedrain, whose great-grandparents founded the company in the 1930s, wasnât fully prepared for the rush when the movie came out. The company, which has warehouses in Port Huron, Mich., and Paris, Ontario, quickly sold out of its âProject Hail Maryâ knit kit and is now taking $90 preorders for its incoming supply of yarn.
The last decade has been challenging, says McPhedrain, 32, but as the longtime catalog business has shifted to e-commerce, itâs made headway by partnering with crafting influencers to promote Mary Maxim products. Now, âProject Hail Maryâ has tied the company to a cool moment for handmade knitwear. âI wish we would have ordered more stock ahead of time,â McPhedrain says.
The executive did manage to secure one of the hot sweaters for himselfâheâs posing in it as the model on the Mary Maxim web store.
And yes, folks, it's foxes, not Laika, the space dog, as so many of you keep claiming.
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