Andy Weir Says ‘The Martian 2’ Isn’t Happening—Here’s Why

Fans have begged Andy Weir for years to send Mark Watney back into space. But the bestselling author behind The Martian says a sequel isn’t just unlikely—it would be lazy. Instead, he’s pouring his energy into outrunning real-world science on projects like Project Hail Mary, both on the page and now on the big screen.

Why Weir Won’t Trap Mark Watney in Space Again

In a recent conversation with Polygon, Weir revealed that his publisher once floated the obvious idea: if he wanted to write a series, why not make The Martian 2? His answer was blunt. Any follow-up would almost certainly boil down to “Mark got stuck somewhere again.” That, he suggested, isn’t a story he’s interested in telling.

Weir did try to build a series once, with his lunar heist novel Artemis. The book was widely panned and sales fell off quickly, a stumble he’s called a reality check after the runaway success of The Martian. Even so, the story may yet get a second life: an Artemis film remains in active development at 20th Century Studios, according to Space.com.

Instead of revisiting Watney, Weir has been steadily moving toward stranger, more expansive stories. He even abandoned a massive space opera project called “Zhek,” with some of its DNA later reworked into Project Hail Mary, his 2021 novel about an amnesiac astronaut tasked with saving the Sun itself.

Outrunning Real-World Science With Project Hail Mary

The decision not to write The Martian 2 also comes from a very Weir-specific problem: science won’t sit still. His books are packed with real physics and engineering, which means new discoveries can quickly turn yesterday’s airtight problem into today’s plot hole. He’s already seen this happen twice.

In The Martian, water scarcity is one of Watney’s biggest challenges—only for NASA’s Curiosity rover to later confirm Martian soil holds far more water than assumed. In Project Hail Mary, Weir mentions computers struggling with speech recognition, a detail that became dated almost overnight thanks to rapid advances in AI.

On the upcoming Project Hail Mary film adaptation, Weir is directly embedded with the team, serving as producer and science consultant. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and star Ryan Gosling are building what looks like Weir’s most ambitious screen venture yet, with writer Drew Goddard also involved in the adaptation, per The Verge. Weir told Polygon he even spent days on set doing algebra to make sure the ship’s on-screen readouts were correct.

That meticulousness has made him one of the defining voices in hard sci-fi—and a growing fixture in Hollywood. Weir has already weighed in on how the movie handles fan-favorite alien Rocky, defending the trailer’s big reveal in a recent interview about the adaptation’s first look in our earlier coverage of the Project Hail Mary trailer.

Watney has not been sealed off completely. The 2024 collection The Martian: Lost Sols offers extra glimpses of that universe without extending the arc into a full sequel, which is roughly as close to a follow-up as Weir seems willing to get.

On the film, his involvement runs past consulting. Weir is a producer giving notes throughout, and at San Diego Comic-Con in 2025 he called the adaptation “really good” so far, singling out screenwriter Drew Goddard. That enthusiasm fits a writer who has long described his books as exercises in “science optimism,” stories where ingenuity rather than despair drives the plot.

New Worlds, Not Old Ones

Weir is now deep into another standalone science fiction novel, details closely guarded. What he has made clear is that he’d rather build new worlds than endlessly loop back to Mars. For readers, that means more one-and-done crises instead of a long-running franchise—an approach that mirrors other authors whose breakout hits keep spawning adaptations while their fiction pushes into fresh territory. (See how George R.R. Martin is juggling similar pressures in our look at why The Winds of Winter is still unfinished.)

And if you still want more Martian-adjacent Weir in your life, you can at least surround yourself with the trappings. The movie tie-in edition of Project Hail Mary hit shelves on December 2 ahead of the film’s March 20, 2026 release, giving fans another meticulously engineered survival story to obsess over—no repeat Watney ordeal required.