Amazon MGM Studios‘ Project Hail Mary will be available to stream on June 18, repping a 90-day theatrical window. For all the cynicism over Amazon crushing the theatrical window with movies like Saltburn and Red One in the past, well they’re clearly not doing any damage here on what is currently the third-highest grossing movie of 2026 with more than $678M worldwide.
But get this — the Lord and Miller directed and produced, Ryan Gosling starring feature take of the Andy Weir novel won’t be available to stream exclusively on Prime Video, rather sister service MGM+.
Why is that? We’re told it’s a horses for courses business decision at the streaming and theatrical studio. Different movies in the Amazon MGM verse go through different greenlight models, i.e. Project Hail Mary went through full windows including PVOD with MGM+ being the pay-one. The Oscar-winning American Fiction was another title that went through full windows with a pay one on MGM+.
Those movies that go from theatrical to Prime Video, are greenlit differently, often have their budgets covered by Prime and are monetized under a different model internally. When it comes to a Prime Video greenlight (i.e. Red One, if it’s believed that the movie has theatrical potential, and can recoup its marketing costs from a theatrical release, then it receives one.
Red One had a 26-day exclusive theatrical window-to-Prime, Air was 37 days while Saltburn was 35-days.
Amazon MGM Studios just opened the $170M Mattel Studios and Escape Artists feature Masters of the Universe which counts a running cume of $60M+ at the global box office in its first five days.
