Go inside the design process for LEGO Icons 11389 Project Hail Mary with Model Designer Nathan Heigert and learn about the challenges of creating a new LEGO set for a movie that hasn’t yet hit the big screen.
LEGO Icons 11389 Project Hail Mary is releasing ahead of its namesake film — starring Ryan Gosling on an interstellar adventure where he meets all degrees of the unexpected — which confronted Model Designer Nathan Heigert with some challenges in putting the set together.
LEGO Icons has become the comfortable home of one-off sets based on popular movies and franchises — 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship and 10356 Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D being two of the most recent. But what those sets have in common is that their respective films and franchises have been out for years, giving ample source material to work from, including behind-the-scenes designs and full movies.
For 11389 Project Hail Mary, Model Designer Nathan Heigert didn’t have all that at his disposal, as the film wouldn’t be out for months. This meant that Nathan not only would have limited material to work from, but also that he didn’t have any ties to the film before jumping aboard for the project.
“I originally worked in LEGO City,” Nathan explains. “And this was the first model I was assigned when I moved over to Icons. When I heard that there was a spaceship that they needed a designer for, I really wanted to do it. That’s my thing. So I was excited. But it was a bit tight-lipped around the office about what exactly it was for.
“It was only after I got to talk to [Creative Lead] Jamie Berard that I found out exactly what I would be working on. That was about a year ago now. So Project Hail Mary was still in production and I didn’t realise there was a movie being made about it! And to be honest, I was only vaguely aware of the book, too. So once I got the assignment, I started to read it. I actually had it on audiobook when I was working on the model throughout the process, especially early on, to get myself up to speed.”
Getting familiar with the story helped Nathan tell his Ryland from his Rocky and capture the spirit of Project Hail Mary in LEGO bricks, but since audiobooks are a little light on visuals, he had to consult other sources to create a screen-accurate design.
“We were provided references, animatics and 3D models,” says Nathan. “There was ample, ample material provided to us from the partner, and it is in line with how it’s depicted in the film.”
That note from Nathan stems from the fact that sometimes the material given to LEGO designers ahead of a film’s release doesn’t end up reflecting what appears in the final cut. It’s how perfectly fine LEGO sets like 75104 Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle end up drawing criticism from fans for being inaccurate when they are accurate to the material designers had to work with.
“The book does have a diagram of the ship which looks quite different from the film version,” Nathan smiles. “But those are changes the filmmakers made. The set does faithfully recreate how it’s depicted in the film.”
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And one of the keys for ensuring that faithful recreation is a strong relationship between the LEGO designers and the partner, in this case the studio and creatives behind Project Hail Mary.
“I just loved working with them,” Nathan says. “Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the directors of the film) were such great guys, so it was really nice to be able to talk to them and glean some of their guidance about the model, about the story and how to make the most of it for the model. And they were very helpful in providing the references that we needed. Obviously we couldn’t have made this if we didn’t have that material. There wasn’t anything publicly available, and there’s things that are not the same in the book as they are in the film. So it was really important that we got answers to our questions about the proper way to depict things, and they were definitely forthcoming with whatever we needed.”
The material provided helped Nathan to nail down aspects of the ship that were either changed from the book or entirely new for the film.
“I had the different animatics and breakdowns of all the different sections, labelled and everything,” he says. “There’s a part here. I think it’s public knowledge now, but there’s a place called the ‘don’t go crazy’ room on the ship, so we have a little Technic ball to represent that. But that’s something from the film, not from the book.”
But even with so much insider information given to him, there was one thing that Nathan just couldn’t see throughout the entire design process — the completed film.
“Honestly, I think I’m just as excited as most of you guys to see the full movie,” Nathan smiles.
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