What The Martian Author Andy Weir Really Felt About Matt Damon's 2015 Adaptation

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Ridley Scott is a cinematic legend, having directed ground-breaking titles like "Thelma & Louise," "Blade Runner," and his 1979 sci-fi box office sensation "Alien." Indeed, science fiction, in particular, is a big part of his catalog, and in 2015, he scored his biggest sci-fi hit ever with "The Martian." Starring Matt Damon ("The Departed") in the lead role, the film adaptation of author Andy Weir's novel of the same name was a huge success. But how did Weir feel about it?

"The Martian" centers on Mark Watney (Damon), an American astronaut who's stranded on Mars after the rest of his crew flees the planet, believing he was killed during a surprise sandstorm. As a result, Watney is forced to contact Earth in the hopes that NASA can find a way to bring him home.

Scott had to shoot "The Martian" at a breakneck speed for a blockbuster of that size. Fortunately, his efforts paid off handsomely, as the film went on to become a critical and commercial hit. In a 2015 interview with NPR, Weir shared his thoughts on the movie, and he had nothing but praise for Scott and Damon's work. As he put it:

"They did a great job. It is fantastic. Matt Damon just completely nails the character of Watney. He's exactly the way I imagined him. One thing that Ridley Scott is actually kind of famous for in a lot of his movies are these grand, sweeping panoramic vistas of the setting. And 'The Martian' is no different. There's beautiful shots of Mars and Martian scenery and terrain. That's something that's really hard to convey in a book. There's only so long you can describe scenery and landscape before the reader throws the book over his shoulder. So, it was really nice to see that."

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"The Martian" made a whopping $653.6 million at the box office, making it Damon's second-biggest movie ever behind only director Christopher Nolan's Best Picture-winner "Oppenheimer" ($976 million). That's not bad company to be in. It's also the highest-grossing movie Scott has directed to date (unadjusted for inflation), which is no small thing.

That's all the more impressive when you remember that "The Martian" was Weir's first published novel. Naturally, this kind of success changed his life. In the same NPR interview, he explained that he was still working as a computer programmer when both his deal for the book and the deal for the movie rights came together in the same week:

"The print deal and the movie deal were being negotiated simultaneously, and ultimately, the two deals were agreed to four days apart. That was an eventful 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'd sneak off to take a phone call about my movie deal, then back to my cubicle to fix bugs. It was pretty surreal."

With an adapted screenplay by Drew Goddard ("The Cabin in the Woods"), there are some differences between the book and movie versions of "The Martian," but that's to be expected. Moreover, those changes didn't seem to bother Weir much, if at all. He's now a thriving full-time writer, with his best-selling novel "Project Hail Mary" having since been turned into a Ryan Gosling vehicle. In other words, the "Martian" film adaptation not only gave him a new career, but he's also happy with how it turned out. It's a pretty nice turn of events.

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