Desi at heart | 'Project Hail Mary' producer Aditya Sood
Hollywood producer Aditya Sood is gearing up for several exciting projects, even as he basks in the success of 'Project Hail Mary'
I jokingly tell that if I do one thing in the entertainment business, it will be to stop people saying ‘chai tea’,” says Hollywood producer Aditya Sood. For a large part, Sood succeeded when Pavitr Prabhakar, the Indian Spider-Man in the acclaimed animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) schools the American one with, “You’re saying ‘tea tea!’ Would I ask you for a ‘coffee coffee’ with room for ‘cream cream’?’’
I jokingly tell that if I do one thing in the entertainment business, it will be to stop people saying ‘chai tea’,” says Hollywood producer Aditya Sood. For a large part, Sood succeeded when Pavitr Prabhakar, the Indian Spider-Man in the acclaimed animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) schools the American one with, “You’re saying ‘tea tea!’ Would I ask you for a ‘coffee coffee’ with room for ‘cream cream’?’’
Three years later, Sood adds more desi flourishes to Project Hail Mary (2026), another Hollywood blockbuster. The sci-fi comedy starring Ryan Gosling as a science teacher sent to space to save the world has a Brit-Indian actor voicing the spacecraft’s computer (Priya Kansara of Polite Society fame) and has the Indian flag prominently displayed on the vehicle’s logo. The company that builds the craft’s medical bay is Indian and called Rekha Shanti, named after Sood’s grandmother and mother, both doctors. “The idea of the film was that the entire world comes together to solve this existential problem,” says Sood.
Born in England and brought up in Seattle, Sood knew, early on, that he didn’t want to follow his parents’ path in medicine. “I was very fortunate that I have two first-generation follow-your-bliss immigrant parents,” he says. He attributes his penchant for films to them, recalling how they would drive three hours to Vancouver to get hold of VHS tapes of Hindi films. But like most American kids growing up in the ’80s, Sood was a Star Wars fanboy. Sharing his passion for cinema was his bestie, Chris aka writer-director Christopher Miller. While Sood would go to Pomona College in California, Miller would befriend and team up with Phil Lord in Dartmouth College. All three would connect in LA, where Sood had film studios like Warner Bros., DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox on his resume. But his stature rose when he became the guy who bought the rights to Andy Weir’s The Martian for screen and executive-produced the first two Deadpool films. Then Lord and Miller came calling. Sood is currently president of Lord Miller Productions.
As Sood basks in the success of Hollywood’s first big hit of 2026, he is equally excited for the upcoming Lord Miller slate. There’s another instalment of Spider-Verse in the works; an adaptation of Murder, She Wrote; a film based on Archie Comics and a live action film, The Sheep Detectives, to release later this year. India is on the cards too, with the production banner having acquired the rights to a true story. “It takes place very much in the India of my parents’ youth,” he says.
