Erling Haaland Just Gave Us His Four Favorite Films, and the List Says a Lot About Him

Athletes doing press tours have become oddly reliable sources of pop culture content lately, especially as more publications figure out ways to get genuine, off-script answers out of famously guarded interview subjects. Few platforms have cracked that code quite like Letterboxd, whose viral “Four Favorites” segment has turned red carpet small talk into a goldmine of surprisingly candid celebrity confessions.

That format has become known for something specific: it doesn’t ask for the “best” films of all time, just the ones someone actually loves. According to IndieWire, Letterboxd’s editor-in-chief Gemma Gracewood has described that distinction as deliberate, designed to draw out real answers rather than rehearsed, media-trained talking points.

Manchester City striker Erling Haaland is the latest to take part, and his picks landed with a splash. According to Letterboxd, Haaland named ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, ‘Gladiator’, ‘Troy’, and ‘Home Alone’ as his four favorite films.

It’s a list that leans heavily into big, sweeping, testosterone-fueled epics, three of the four films built around ambition, empire, and men doing extreme things in extreme circumstances, before rounding things out with a beloved holiday comedy classic. For a professional athlete whose entire career revolves around intensity and physical dominance, the pairing of ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Troy’ feels almost thematically on brand.

Haaland’s inclusion in Letterboxd’s segment fits into a broader trend the platform has built its reputation on. Past participants have used the format to reveal surprisingly personal tastes, with IndieWire noting that Adam Sandler once named ‘Five Easy Pieces’ and ‘The Last Detail’ among his favorites, while Jennifer Lawrence gave equal love to ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ and ‘The Long Goodbye’.

The moment also marks a notable shift for Haaland specifically, given his well-documented reputation for terse, guarded interviews earlier in his career. He was previously known for giving famously short answers to reporters, once telling Goal that journalists often get exactly the kind of response their questions deserve, joking that asking about the weather only gets you “Good” in return.

That reputation has softened in recent years with Haaland himself acknowledging he’s grown more comfortable engaging with the media as he’s gotten older. Taking part in a format built specifically around personal, unscripted answers suggests he’s leaning further into that shift rather than away from it.

Fans have already started picking apart the list online, debating what a mix of Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Wolfgang Petersen, and a nineties Christmas comedy says about the striker’s taste. Whether or not the choices are meant to be taken too seriously, that’s rather the point of Letterboxd’s format in the first place, favorites over greatest, gut instinct over critical consensus.

For a player whose on-pitch reputation is built on relentless focus and clinical precision, seeing him name ‘Home Alone’ right alongside three sprawling historical epics is the kind of detail that makes these kinds of interviews so much fun to read in the first place. It’s a small glimpse into a side of Haaland that rarely makes it into post-match press conferences.

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