In a brief video posted to social media in March, Ryan Gosling stood beside a computer-generated alien from his forthcoming film Project Hail Mary and attempted to exorcise a decade-old regret. “This is my hail Mary attempt to fix my La La Hand,” he said, before striking a pose and shouting, “How’s my hand?” The moment, shared by his partner Eva Mendes, was the latest chapter in a peculiar saga that began on a hillside in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park during the filming of La La Land. There, a split-second decision about the angle of his fingers would go on to haunt the actor for years.

Gosling has long described the original poster image — his hand held flat while Emma Stone’s pointed upward — as something that “killed the energy” of the dance. In interviews with US outlets, he recalled that he thought the flattened hand would look “cooler,” despite everyone on set telling him otherwise. He dubbed the pose the “La La Hand” and, with characteristic self-deprecation, referred to himself as “Hamburger Hands Gosling.” The image became one of the most recognisable film posters of the 2010s, yet for its star it remained a source of comic torment, a detail he could not unsee.

The film itself, directed by Damien Chazelle, was a global phenomenon upon its release in 2016. It earned over $447 million worldwide against a $30 million budget, won six Academy Awards — including Best Director and Best Actress for Stone — and set a record with seven Golden Globes. Across Latin America, Europe, and Asia, audiences embraced the bittersweet romance between a jazz pianist and an aspiring actress. In India, the film’s music and visuals found a devoted following; in Brazil, its Oscar-night mix-up, when La La Land was mistakenly announced as Best Picture before Moonlight was declared the true winner, became a defining pop-culture memory. Yet amid all this, Gosling’s hand remained a quiet, persistent footnote.

To mark the tenth anniversary, Lionsgate has now released a redesigned poster in which Gosling’s hand is raised to mirror Stone’s, creating a symmetrical line that had been missing. The studio’s Instagram caption read simply: “A minor adjustment.” The gesture was met with a wave of amused relief from fans, who had followed the actor’s running joke for years. The film is set to return to US cinemas on 16 August, and to UK screens later that month. In the new image, the two silhouetted figures dance beneath a violet sky, their hands finally aligned — a small correction that, for its protagonist, closes a loop that began on a night shoot in Griffith Park, when a dancer’s instinct led to a decade of second-guessing.