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THE NORTHMAN – Official Trailer – In Theaters April 22

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Robert Eggers is bringing Viking-age revenge back to the big screen, and Focus Features just dropped the first look.

Focus Features released the debut trailer for The Northman in December 2021, giving audiences their first extended footage of Robert Eggers’ 10th-century epic. The film reimagines the ancient Scandinavian legend of Prince Amleth — the same story that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet — as a blood-soaked, mythologically grounded revenge tale. It’s set for theatrical release on April 22, 2022.

• Alexander Skarsgård stars as the adult Amleth, hunting the uncle who murdered his father and abducted his mother, repeating the vow: “I will avenge you, Father! I will save you, Mother! I will kill you, Fjölnir!”
• Ethan Hawke plays King Aurvandil War-Raven, Amleth’s slain father, while Claes Bang plays Fjölnir, the treacherous uncle who kills the king and takes Queen Gudrún — played by Nicole Kidman — for himself.
• Björk appears as the blind Seeress, marking her first major film role since Lars von Trier’s 2000 film Dancer in the Dark, alongside Anya Taylor-Joy as Olga of the Birch Forest and Willem Dafoe as court jester Heimir the Fool.

The Legend Behind the Screenplay

Eggers co-wrote the script with Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, drawing directly from the medieval Amleth legend rather than any modern Viking property. That legend, chronicled centuries before Shakespeare adapted it into Hamlet, follows a prince forced to flee after his father is murdered by his own brother — a betrayal-and-revenge structure the trailer leans into hard, cutting between Amleth’s childhood escape and his return as a hardened warrior.

The trailer frames the entire plot around that childhood mantra Amleth repeats to himself as he flees the kingdom, and it’s the emotional spine of the footage: a boy’s promise that curdles into a grown man’s mission by the time Skarsgård takes over the role.

A Cast Built for Grim Mythology

Eggers assembled a lineup that spans arthouse regulars and one genuine music-world surprise. Skarsgård carries the lead, with Hawke and Kidman as his doomed parents and Bang as the uncle responsible for both their fates. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Olga of the Birch Forest emerges in the footage as Amleth’s ally through the carnage, while Willem Dafoe’s Heimir the Fool provides the film’s court-jester figure rather than a villain role.

The real curiosity is Björk’s casting as the Seeress, a mysterious blind figure glimpsed only briefly in the trailer. It’s her first major film performance since Dancer in the Dark more than two decades earlier, and Focus Features clearly knows it — her presence has become one of the trailer’s most-discussed elements alongside the film’s berserkers and shield maidens.

“I will avenge you, Father! I will save you, Mother! I will kill you, Fjölnir!”

Eggers’ Signature Grit on Full Display

Visually, the trailer sticks to what’s made Eggers a critical favorite since The Witch and The Lighthouse — a commitment to historical texture over stylized fantasy. Runic title cards, muddy longhouses, and Valkyrie imagery are cut alongside berserker warriors mid-battle, giving the footage a tone closer to folk-horror than a conventional action epic. It’s the kind of period authenticity that’s become his calling card, applied here to Norse myth instead of Puritan New England or a 19th-century lighthouse.

Fans of Eggers’ earlier work will recognize the pacing too — the trailer resists spelling out plot beats in favor of atmosphere, letting the dread build through imagery rather than exposition. It’s a similar marketing instinct to what Marvel used rolling out its own Moon Knight trailer around the same period, though The Northman leans far grimmer and far less superhero in its execution.

The Road to April

With the trailer now out and the April 22, 2022 release date locked, The Northman joins a stretch of high-profile genre trailers hitting in late 2021 — from Paramount+’s Halo series trailer to Amazon’s title reveal for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — all jockeying for attention in the same mythic-fantasy wave. What separates Eggers’ film from that pack is scale of ambition against budget: a hard-R Viking saga built on legend rather than franchise, riding entirely on Skarsgård’s performance and Eggers’ reputation for unflinching period detail.

Between now and April, expect Focus Features to keep leaning on Björk’s involvement and the Amleth-Hamlet connection as marketing hooks — both are the rare specifics in this trailer that nobody else in the genre-fantasy rush can claim.