How Martian Author Andy Weir Really Felt About Matt Damon’s 2015 Adaptation

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Ridley Scott is a cinema legend, having directed groundbreaking titles like “Thelma & Louise,” “Blade Runner” and his 1979 sci-fi box office sensation, “Alien.” Indeed, science fiction, in particular, makes up a large part of his catalog, and in 2015 he scored his biggest science fiction hit with “The Martian.” Starring Matt Damon (“The Departed”) in the lead role, the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by author Andy Weir was a huge success. But what did Weir think?

“The Martian” centers on Mark Watney (Damon), an American astronaut stranded on Mars after the rest of his crew flees the planet, believing they have been killed during a surprise sandstorm. As a result, Watney is forced to contact Earth in hopes that NASA can find a way to return him home.

Scott had to shoot “The Martian” at breakneck speed for a blockbuster of this scale. Fortunately, his efforts largely paid off, as the film became a critical and commercial success. In a 2015 interview with NPRWeir shared his thoughts on the film and he had nothing but praise for Scott and Damon’s work. As he said:

“They did a great job. It’s fantastic. Matt Damon plays the character of Watney perfectly. He’s exactly how I imagined him. One thing that Ridley Scott is actually famous for in a lot of his films is these grand, sweeping, sweeping views of the set. And ‘The Martian’ is no different. There are beautiful shots of Martian and Martian landscapes and terrain. That’s something that’s really hard to convey in a book. There’s that a long time to describe a landscape and a landscape before the reader throws the book over their shoulder, so it was really nice to see that.

“The Martian” grossed $653.6 million at the box office, making it Damon’s second-biggest film of all time. behind director Christopher Nolan’s only Best Picture-winning film, “Oppenheimer” ($976 million). It’s not a bad company. It’s also the highest-grossing film Scott has made to date (not adjusted for inflation), which is no small thing.

This is all the more impressive when we remember that “The Martian” was Weir’s first published novel. Naturally, this kind of success changed his life. In the same interview with NPR, he explained that he was still working as a computer programmer when his book deal and movie rights deal closed in the same week:

“The print deal and the movie deal were being negotiated simultaneously, and ultimately both deals were done within four days of each other. It was a hectic week for me. By the way, at the time I was a computer programmer, so I was like in my cubicle fixing bugs, then I would run off to take a phone call about my movie deal, and then I would come back to my cubicle to fix bugs. It was pretty surreal.”

Based on a screenplay adapted by Drew Goddard (“The Cabin in the Woods”), there is some differences between the book and film versions of “The Martian”, but this is to be expected. Plus, these changes didn’t seem to bother Weir too much, if at all. He is now a successful full-time writer, with his bestselling novel “Project Hail Mary” having since been turned into a Ryan Gosling vehicle. In other words, the film adaptation of “Martian” not only gave him a new career, but he is also satisfied with the result. This is a very nice turn of events.

You can grab “The Martian” on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD from Amazon.