'Project Hail Mary' end credits showcase stunning nebula photos captured over 400 hours by a single astrophotographer — here's the inside story

In August 2025, astrophotographer Rod Prazeres received a strange Instagram message that seemed a little too good to be true — a "small production company" wanted to license his images for use in an undisclosed sci-fi movie.

Next followed a series of conference calls, accompanied by the signing of an NDA. For months, Prazeres and the production company discussed using his images for a sequence earlier in the movie, but as the producers' creative vision shifted, things began to look uncertain.

Of course, working with Amazon MGM Studios to help illustrate a major blockbuster was on an entirely different level from anything that had come before, and all because his photography had drawn the eyes of a production company searching Google Images for views of the Milky Way. "Never in a million years would I have expected that to happen, even if I had 10 years experience, 20 experience, let alone two and a half?