Ground control to Script Apart listeners – today on the show, we’re blasting off into the cosmos with three formidable sci-fi storytelling talents. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the writer-director-producer pair responsible for films like Into The Spider-Verse, Across The Spider-Verse, 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, The Lego Movie and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. Screenwriter Drew Godard, meanwhile, you may know from movies like Cloverfield, Cabin In The Woods, World War Z and Bad Times At The El Royale, which he also directed. 

Project Hail Mary is their new film, directed by Lord & Miller and written by Drew, and it’s one of the most entertaining and defiantly hopeful spectacles of the year so far – a tale of empathy and communication as a weapon against adversity, and another story of an astronaut adrift among the stars, adapted from an author who’s made that kinda his specialty. In 2015, Drew worked with Ridley Scott on The Martian – an adaptation of a novel by Andy Weir. A decade later, Drew teamed with Andy again on a film that, from the outside, might look like The Martian Part II. Project Hail Mary, though, is in fact a brilliant inversion of Andy’s breakthrough book, and of other similar-sounding space adventure yarns.

It stars Ryan Gosling as junior high teacher Ryland Grace – a man who wakes up one day alone on a space shuttle with amnesia, and no recollection of what put him there. Soon he discovers himself to be at the centre of a mission to heal our solar system’s dying sun. This dude in a nice cardigan is somehow humanity’s last shot at salvation.

“So, a bit like Sunshine by Danny Boyle?” I hear you ask. Not really! Despite the cosmic high-stakes involved in that premise, Project Hail Mary has a hilarious lightness of touch about it, and a message about friendship at its core that’s remarkable. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, first with Drew, then handing over to Phil and Chris, you’ll hear exactly how the filmmakers arrived at that tone. Collectively, we break down every twist and turn in Project Hail Mary – including the inspirations behind Rocky, a character that let me be very clear, I would die for. Drew also gives me a couple of insights into what he’s cooking up with The Matrix 5, following the announcement a while back that he’s going to be helming the next instalment in that saga. 

Support for this episode comes from Final Draft's Big Break screenwriting competition.

Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.

To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.

Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage.

Today on the show – a conversation about Bugonia, with the film’s writer, Will Tracy. Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the upcoming Academy Awards, the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film is an black comedy thriller about a pharmaceutical CEO, Michelle, played by Emma Stone, who’s kidnapped by a conspiracy theorist, Ted, played by Jesse Plemmons. Ted is convinced that Michelle is not of this planet. He’s insistent that she’s an infiltrator from an alien world, responsible for the collapse of Earth’s bee population and plotting a full-scale invasion. 

The film’s an adaptation of a South Korean film from 2003, Jang Joon-hwan’s Save The Green Planet, but feels tailormade for 2026. After all, could you really blame someone for believing a pharmaceutical company CEO to be an alien, given the coldness they often exhibit and the corporate babble they speak. If you’re someone like Ted, all that empty LinkedIn speak about “synergy” and “Q1 shortfalls” and “creative solutions” may as well be an alien language, right? That’s the cleverness of the conceit in Bugonia. In 2026, there’s a chasm between the boardroom overlords who steer society and the people left behind by their decisions – especially when it comes to medicine in America, Michelle’s company’s MO – and Will’s script speaks to that chasm with sci-fi invention and offbeat humour. 

Right now, those of you familiar with the screenwriter’s work, might be thinking: “Yeah, of course it does! Have you seen this guy’s CV?” And those people have got a point. Succession! The Menu! Mountainhead, on which he acted as a producer! These are all stories laser-focused on issues of class, staring into that aforementioned chasm between the haves and have-nots from different angles. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, I get into the thematic throughlines between some of these stories and what draws Will to them, as well as the secrets behind the most fascinating twists and turns within this story. 

Support for today's episode comes from Final Draft's Big Break screenwriting contest.

Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.

To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.

Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage.

Pandora beckons once more, guys. Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa are back on the show today, spilling secrets from their screenplay for the recent third film in the Avatar franchise, Fire & Ash. The husband-wife duo came on the show around the release of Avatar: The Way of Water a couple of years back, and it’s always a good time chatting with them – I love the unapologetic earnestness of their storytelling and the habit they have of taking huge, billion dollar IP and using them as vehicles for stories about the wonder of nature and what we risk by not showing our environment the appropriate care.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. Jurassic World. These are huge-scale blockbuster spectacles that, in an era of franchise films drenched in irony and a certain cynicism, make these very sincere pleas to appreciate animals. To revere and protect nature. Because to lose it or underestimate it leads to chaos and collapse. Fire & Ash is another film to bear that signature of theirs – and it’s an epic of mythic proportions. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, we break down the intricacies of this latest collaboration with director James Cameron.

They tell me about the moment in which a character very viscerally contemplates suicide, in a scene I was really surprised to see in a Disney tentpole movie. They tell me about the conversations that led to the heartbreaking moment in which Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully agonises over whether to do the unthinkable to save his Na’vi tribe. And we also get into the ending of the movie and what exactly is happening as series antagonist Colonel Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, throws himself to his apparent demise.

Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.

To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.

Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage.

Today on the show, our short run of episodes about Oscar 2026 awards contenders continues with a story about grief and growth amid the final flickers of the old West. Train Dreams – adapted from a novella by Dennis Johnson by my guests today, Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley – takes viewers back to Idaho, 1917. The Spokane International Railroad is under construction and quiet tree logger Robert Granier, played by Joel Edgerton, is one of the labourers paving the way for it. Midway through his life, he experiences an unthinkable tragedy and finds himself plagued by the question: was it karma? Perhaps for his inaction during the brutal, racist murder of a colleague. Or maybe even for the environmental sins of felling so many trees, so much life. The planet somehow evening the score.

If you’ve seen the film, I doubt you’ll be surprised in the slightest by its four nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Original Song. Train Dreams is a heart-wrenchingly elegy to another time, to another world and to the people we lose in life, who are sometimes ripped from us with sudden cruelty. Clint and Greg know all about the latter. As you’ll hear in this episode, Clint, who directed the movie as well as co-writing it with Greg, lost both his parents in quick succession before filming. And in fact experienced what he’s called “visitations” from them after their deaths, in his dreams like Robert does in Train Dreams.

Support for this episode comes from Final Draft's Big Break screenwriting contest.

Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.

To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.

Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage.