'The Northman' Subway Posters

About

The Northman Subway Posters refers to advertisements for the 2022 Robert Egger's film The Northman put up in New York City subway stations that don't actually feature the title of the movie. Though it's unclear if this was intentional or an oversight on the poster designer's part, the lack of a movie title amused social media users, who joked about it by adding false titles to the poster. The lack of a title on the ads generated significant discussion online leading up to the movie's release date, resulting in some speculating that it was intentional.

Origin

On April 3rd, 2022, Twitter user @JM3K^[1] posted a picture of a poster for The Northman hanging in the New York City subway system, remarking "lol they forgot to print the title on the subway ads for The Northman." The tweet gained over 1,900 retweets and 46,000 likes in four days (shown below).

Spread

Over the following days, other users observed that the posters lacked the film's title. For example, on April 4th, 2022, user @parabasis^[2] posted a dialogue parody imagining the scenario that led to the apparent error, gaining over 2,000 retweets and 27,000 likes in three days (shown below, left). User @alexevans42^[3] wondered if the "error" was perhaps intentional in order to generate viral marketing for the film (shown below, right).

People also began crafting parodies of the poster by photoshopping humorous titles from other films. For example, user @monkeyrotica^[4] added a title for The Flinstones 2: Bad Day In Bedrock, gaining over 40 retweets and 1,200 likes in three days (shown below, left). User @workywood^[5] added The Devil Wears Prada 2: Judgment Day to the poster, gaining over 30 retweets and 1,500 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References