Wave goodbye to Ryan Gosling’s “La La Hand.”
Lionsgate has changed the actor’s hand placement on the poster for “La La Land” as the studio prepares to rerelease the Academy Award-winning musical to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
Turns out, the city of stars is shining just for him; it just took a decade for his hand to find the spotlight.
Gosling said the flat hand gesture has haunted him since it first appeared on the poster and physical media covers.
When asked by the Wall Street Journal Magazine in 2024 if there was a role he’d like to redo, his answer was “La La Land.”
“There’s a moment that haunts me where we’re dancing, Emma [Stone] and I, and I didn’t know this would become the poster for the movie, but I thought we were supposed to have our hands up and I thought it’d be cool to put my hand [flat].”
Everyone told him it wasn’t cool, but he stuck with it, Gosling said.
“Now when I look at it, and I have to see it all the time, you know what would’ve been cooler … [the correct pose]. It just killed the energy that way. … I call it La La Hand,” he continued.
The pose brought him so much shame that during his press tour for “Project Hail Mary,” the Oscar nominee took matters into his own … hands.
“This is my hail mary attempt to fix my La La Hand, and my buddy Rocky is going to help me,” Gosling said in the Instagram video in March, right before recreating the image the way it was intended to look with his puppet co-star (standing in for Stone).
Directed by Damien Chazelle, “La La Land” was nominated for 14 Oscars, winning six, including lead actress for Stone and director. For a brief few minutes at the ceremony, it was incorrectly named best picture before “Moonlight” rightfully took the prize.
Producer Marc Platt and Lionsgate are also developing a stage production of the film for Broadway. The musical will dance its way into theaters again Aug. 16, with all limbs correctly placed.
