The Northman hit theatres this weekend, and it’s currently leading the box office during a packed weekend of movies. The Robert Eggers (The VVitch, The Lighthouse) film is currently a hit with critics, and has an 89% critics score and 71% audience score on Rotten Toamtoes. ComicBook.com‘s Patrick Cavanaugh gave the movie a 4 out of 5 and says it “fully delivers on its promise of Nordic mayhem, managing to satiate the most bloodthirsty of audiences.” The new film stars Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, who at one point must go up against Hafþór Björnsson, the actor best known for playing The Mountain on Game of Thrones. Skarsgård recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about battling the famous bodybuilder and admitted it was intimdating.
“He came out to set when we were shooting a scene, the first time you meet Amleth. Hafþór wasn’t, obviously, working that day, but he came to set just to say hi to everyone. And, yes, I was intimidated,” Skarsgård told EW of meeting his 6-foot-9 co-star. “Shaking Hafþór’s hand – I’m 6′ 4” – I was like [Skarsgård strains his head to look up], ‘Hi, sir. It’s a pleasure.’ His hand just dwarfed mine.”
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“He tried to go easy on me, but he still has to tap me lightly and I just went flying,” Skarsgård added with a laugh. “I was definitely quite sore after that week of filming. You do not want to fight the strongest man on the planet.”
Eggers also added Björnsson isn’t much of a talker, just like his famous Game of Thrones character. “We’d do a take, and he would be like, ‘Are you happy with Hafþór?’ I’m like, ‘Yes. Yes, it’s great,’” the director shared.
In previous interviews, Eggers called the film one of his biggest to date.
“The scale is so huge and there are so many more locations and things that I couldn’t do everything or know every prop myself,” Eggers revealed. “That’s been a challenge with the new movie…There’s many locations in the film, so we were constantly going on scouts to find places or reassess places that we have found and we’re building sets there. We’re designing all these worlds, building these villages, we’re making thousands of costumes and props, training the horses the things they’ll need to do, designing the shots of the films.”
The Northman is now playing in theatres.
